tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-305038832024-02-19T02:32:22.988-08:00Oh Sweet Nuthin'Ethan's spot for criticism, writings, and thoughts in general.Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-66197590060757956082010-07-06T14:13:00.000-07:002010-07-06T14:20:13.582-07:00The Funny Things People See in Funny People<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hCl1s0gNzqclkxRy0_Lc2VTZTGN6LY3JTNciATKEtyXNX_tk-gJryr1e6go18CzF8jJ5Ejqp45lw9ZZCEdPk9HolGpWxyMgbNyyjtiqp9bwJAP2MDLIi8tLdiyU28tfyxWNq/s1600/funny_people.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 214px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490906104724845186" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hCl1s0gNzqclkxRy0_Lc2VTZTGN6LY3JTNciATKEtyXNX_tk-gJryr1e6go18CzF8jJ5Ejqp45lw9ZZCEdPk9HolGpWxyMgbNyyjtiqp9bwJAP2MDLIi8tLdiyU28tfyxWNq/s320/funny_people.jpg" /></a><br /><div>The Funny Things People See in <em>Funny People<br /></em><br />I got a copy of <em>Funny People</em> this week off of my Netflix cue. <em>Funny People </em>was the Judd Apatow movie (Apatow directed mega-hits <em>The 40 Year Old Virgin</em> and <em>Knocked Up</em>) released about a year ago in theaters, starring Adam Sandler as a comedian who, like Adam Sandler, made some movies many regard as terrible, and used to do stand-up comedy. It didn’t do very well in theaters, and currently has a slightly-above-average critical rating on Metacritic.com and Rottentomatoes.com. It made slightly less money in worldwide box office ($71 million) than it cost to make ($75 million), so is probably considered a bit of a failure.<br /><br />I’ll get the obvious out of the way – I loved <em>Funny People</em>. Although you could rightly call <em>The 40 Year Old Virgin</em> one of the best, most important movies of the 2000s, <em>Funny People</em> is certainly as good, a more thoughtful and more ambitious movie that is, completely, about the depth of the people who try and make a career of being funny. That the movie is quite funny on occasion is also quite the bonus, though judging from reviews you’ve read, the movie is the height of floppy melodrama.<br /><br />It’s not even that I loved <em>Funny People</em> or found it surprisingly funny. I’m fascinated by it. To me, this is the height of terrific filmmaking – of superb acting, excellent direction and staging, but most of all, amazing writing.<br /><br />For a movie that seems so endlessly casual and off-the-cuff – it follows a world of stand-up comedians almost obsessively belittling each other’s insecurities – it would make sense that much of the dialogue wound up being improvised. I have no idea if that’s true or not. What I do know is this is still extraordinary writing. You can tell from the details.<br /><br />Each character is a master of complexities. Its main character, George Simmons (Adam Sandler), is a popular movie star, but is sad and lonely… and also caustic, horny, unsympathetic…and charming, and hopeful, and occasionally very wise. That he’s played by Adam Sandler is its own stroke of meta-genius, but there are also his “movies” that have made him a star – <em>Re-Do</em>, where a grown man is re-incarnated into a baby (or something), and <em>Merman</em>, where a man turns into a mermaid. Are these movies meant to appear as “terrible”? Sure, and they do appear that way, but they also appear as important to fans, and children, who obsessively mimic the voices he made famous in this mirror-version of Hollywood.<br /><br />Even the phrase “appear as terrible” is misleading, because truly, I don’t know what those movies are. They’re meant to be, I suppose, about as good as a Rob Schneider movie (he “turns into” things all the time. I’m mostly reminded, though, of the <em>South Park</em> parody in which Schneider turned into a stapler, in <em>The Stapler</em>). They are merely choices in Simmons’ career, something which has been undeniably successful, and which starred an undeniable comedic force.<br /><br />As a man, his humor bites. His assistant Ira (Seth Rogen) is constantly, mercilessly belittled by George – but then, so is George, and everyone else. George hires Ira to help him write jokes and be his personal assistant as he attempts to “do more stand-up.” Some of his stand-up involves George on a piano singing something that isn’t at all funny, despite a couple of laughs, and the scene is revelatory in its conflicting interests – a need for an audience he can’t stand, an ability to fuck endless women who always leave him.<br /><br />Like George and the movies he’s appeared in, the stand-up feels real too. It turns out, according to the <em>Funny People</em> Wikipedia page, it was all filmed in front of a live audience as actual stand-up would be. They feel like real jokes with real reactions by real audiences. That isn’t to say it’s all funny (some of it certainly is very funny), but it is, certainly, full of things you’d laugh at on a night out with drinks. The awkward moments play like awkward moments. The characters too seem like the types of people who would tell these jokes. Rogen’s Ira, towards the end, has a bit about how his friends watch beautiful women on television and say “I want to fuck her,” whereas he feels tempted to say something more apt to his own personality, “I want to pick her up from the airport.” As George says to him, “you seem more like the Ira I like in real life on stage” doing this act, and you’re apt to agree.<br /><br />Ah, but that’s the beauty of these characters. There’s another lead I haven’t mentioned yet, which is the character of Laura, played by Leslie Mann. Laura was the girl that got away from George, and when she finds out he’s sick, it rekindles something in her. In fact, we expect this plot line from the moment we see her, but we don’t expect the turns it takes, the swiftness with which it gets there. The scene in which the two see each other again initially is full of tears and honesty, and anger, and absolutely ignites the movie around it with barely-hidden emotions. If this was supposed to be a conventional comedy arc, a scene like this shouldn’t happen until at least the 2/3 mark.<br /><br />I realize I got this far without saying the main plot of the movie – which is about George discovering he has cancer, responding to an experimental treatment, and actually changing his life, but not really in a manner you’d expect. Interviews I’d read of the movie in which Apatow described the movie as about a person who gets shaken by this incident, but doesn’t really change. In fact, George does change, but also stays his cantankerous, sometimes awful, cutting, lonely self.<br /><br />That’s true of Laura too, who has passion re-ignited, but finds its practicality harder to deal with. There is one scene that is truly hilarious, and is also deeply moving. In it, a lie propelling the action is exposed, and Laura must keep up the lie, or not, and in the meantime justify her actions to her aussie-himbo husband, Craig (Eric Bana)… by imitating his paltry justifications in an Aussie accent. What an extraordinary scene. The accent is terrible, and shifting, and so so sad. Watching it from the sidelines, George and Ira are as fixated on its lack of quality as they are on its content, and so are we. That the scene gives you both is a marvel, but it gives you a third layer of civility that’s finally being ripped between its characters, and, truly, it’s a scene of accomplished characterization, deft timing, and many many layers to the people at its center.<br /><br />But why did people object to <em>Funny People</em> so much when I found endless things to rave about? First on the list of complaints was that it wasn’t funny. Well, I suppose there are less gross-out belly laughs than in <em>The 40 Year Old Virgin</em> and <em>Knocked Up</em>, but actually, I laughed in <em>Funny People </em>all the time. I don’t know if I’d ultimately call it a “comedy,” but that’s a problem of the limits of genre categorization, not the movie. To quote Roger Ebert’s review of a movie that was neither funny nor interesting, Wes Anderson’s <em>The Darjeeling Limited</em>, “why do we have to be the cops enforcing these narrow rules of movie making?” Why indeed? <em>Funny People</em> is quite funny, and it has the power to be quite upsetting too. I’m not sure I even understand what benchmark it’s not living up to.<br /><br />Because its humor often comes from the same place it did in Apatow’s previous two movies – from his same fey, monotone sarcasm as spoken between jovial friends trying to out-blasé each other. And also from the every day nature of the circumstances. The truth is, three years after seeing <em>Knocked Up</em>, the scene I remember laughing the hardest at was the one in which Kristen Wiig tells Katherine Heigl, in total monotone, that they should “hang out” sometime. The truth is, though the movie is less intended for big gutter laughs, I found the humor truer in <em>Funny People </em>than <em>Knocked Up.<br /></em><br />As for the other complaints? Reviewers have seized on the movie’s bleak outlook on life, its running time, and the length of time it devotes to its characters visit to Laura’s home in Marin County. Yes, it’s a long movie of characters often trounced by their choices in life, but I don’t know where I’d tell Judd Apatow to edit. I never found <em>Funny People</em> sluggish and found something to admire in every scene. From a screenwriting perspective, bits of plot dropped into a previous scene come up by slight reference in later scenes, so again, I don’t know that I’d have any practical editing suggestions. And the Marin County scenes – besides comprising nearly an hour of screen time – are the guts of the movie.<br /><br />Those were the scenes in which I saw and believed that George could regret much of his life, wish for a better one, and still react the way a sometimes-scumbag does. Those were the scenes in which I could believe that Laura could be swept up in passion again only to reconsider her life, for better or for worse. Katherine Heigl complained of <em>Knocked Up</em> that the women were killjoys, painfully practical worrywarts while the men got to have all the fun and wish for more with their lives. Perhaps she’d find the same issue with Mann’s character here, except that I completely believed this person I saw on the screen.<br /><br />Completely believed it, every second. This is the ultimate testament to the great writing and staging and acting I saw in <em>Funny People</em>. I believed that Laura was a person who used to be a sorta b-rate actress, perhaps appearing on <em>Party of Five</em> and commercials, that she was getting somewhere playing “the bitch” and that it never really went anywhere. I believed her husband could be casually cruel to her but actually be a horrible human being. And I believed that she believed she was getting someone different from George with him, and wound up with someone who’s the same. Sandler got very good press for his performance here (and he deserved even more better press, if not an Oscar nomination, but that’s a different conversation), but Mann too is outstanding. In life, you can look at a person and wonder if you understand what they’re thinking, and perhaps still feel hopelessly lost on the baffling complexities of their lives. The truest compliment of her work here is that I got it all – what she was thinking and what she wasn’t, what she told herself, and George, and Craig, and why she chooses what she chooses.<br /><br />Is that bleakness on the moviemakers’ part? I don’t think so. Unlike, say, <em>Revolutionary Road</em>, I don’t think the movie is “saying” anything so bleak and angry about modernity, or our social world. If it “says” anything beyond its embodiment of character, it’s a sweet and only somewhat acidic moment at the Thanksgiving table, where George gives a cheers to everyone, saying that being with your friends, and being young are things to savor and love while you have them, and that getting old “kind of sucks.” Yet you look at him and think, he looks just as good as the 20-somethings he’s sitting with, he’s done things to remind him of how great life can be, and that life can be enjoyed by anyone willing.<br /><br />Or to put it differently. One of George’s stand-up bits: “In your 20s, you look at old people and think, ‘I hate that, I don’t want to be like that.’ In your 30’s you think, ‘I hate the government! I hate politics!’ In your 40s, you think, ‘…I’m hungry.’” The triumph of Funny People is saying “I’m hungry.”</div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-83200364026586788322010-03-01T11:25:00.000-08:002010-03-01T11:34:29.530-08:00Oscars 2010: Good and Good For You!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwB8qwOWkhAbNE6k0zfVCUZ8z_DCzIgC71o11025n53JaWEZ0Zj5s4f8mx49EmieIO-jKytlpMXven2YGyr8omuLbQWPUir4HJsz_RVVPacM4Fj7aFJtJN-w6jhy7gBQsm4f9A/s1600-h/monique.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 214px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443749083123826242" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwB8qwOWkhAbNE6k0zfVCUZ8z_DCzIgC71o11025n53JaWEZ0Zj5s4f8mx49EmieIO-jKytlpMXven2YGyr8omuLbQWPUir4HJsz_RVVPacM4Fj7aFJtJN-w6jhy7gBQsm4f9A/s320/monique.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxGAQopPK1Vr70ffO4td47uKzdWmVw2LD8AK_E29aGM50iu4opuSACu-EdmAgZEfUXAyiHdKhPlcPVhADIna_rINeoJqGa3PGEqUr0E4XsUWESr6mGt_QLTDFkV9RqHTONelY/s1600-h/avatar.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 180px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443749074718187682" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxGAQopPK1Vr70ffO4td47uKzdWmVw2LD8AK_E29aGM50iu4opuSACu-EdmAgZEfUXAyiHdKhPlcPVhADIna_rINeoJqGa3PGEqUr0E4XsUWESr6mGt_QLTDFkV9RqHTONelY/s320/avatar.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgINDA0fVlePSYKQGeNhuKJaBqqUSAG_l_K1l9VzETS42jPtNcUqF-_KtABbvZR3BgN1SyOPJyVdYLPns2kG9YNioRw6EUqEZkVza2ayhfFkciEVP4NylVyYhXv_2nJOq_LvN7x/s1600-h/district-9-warning.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 188px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443749066738811602" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgINDA0fVlePSYKQGeNhuKJaBqqUSAG_l_K1l9VzETS42jPtNcUqF-_KtABbvZR3BgN1SyOPJyVdYLPns2kG9YNioRw6EUqEZkVza2ayhfFkciEVP4NylVyYhXv_2nJOq_LvN7x/s320/district-9-warning.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><br />The Oscars will be handed out this year on Sunday, March 7th. Among the winners will be a daytime talk show host, one evil motherfucker, the chick from <em>Speed </em>and <em>The Net</em>, and The Dude.<br /><br />I think. After a busy year in which I started law school, I thought I’d managed to see most of the “big awards” movies, or at least movies during the year that got a great deal of press. I was impressed with myself, really. I mean, I love great movies and love nothing more than seeing something unexpected and honest and surprising.<br /><br />But then I saw the Acting nominees. This year, they feature performances from 14 movies, 6 of which I’ve seen. So be it. I think I’m far above the national average, and the American population will be watching clips of movies they’ve absolutely never heard of later this year.<br /><br />This is true even in a year with 10 Best Picture nominees. This move by the Academy – to move from 5 to 10 nominees – has been widely derided as a cheap ploy by the Oscars to lure in more voters by featuring more Blockbusters people care about. Well, the haters are right, but so what? Can you think of another way in which movies like <em>District 9 </em>and <em>Up </em>would be Best Picture nominees? The “Second 5” of the Best Picture race truly had no script, and the nominees were as unpredictable, wide-ranging and occasionally-very-good as the world of movies in 2010.<br /><br />In any case, my picks for the races:<br /><br /><strong>Best Supporting Actor:<br />Will and Should Wind</strong>: Christoph Waltz <em>Inglourious Basterds </em><br /><strong>Great performances not nominated:</strong> Zachary Quinto <em>Star Trek </em><br />I really don’t have much to add to this category besides Zachary Quinto’s complicated, short-fused Spock in <em>Star Trek</em> that, I think, was the real acting surprise in a terrific movie that featured many. This is the category I know the least about – I’ve not seen <em>The Messenger, The Lovely Bones, The Last Station,</em> or <em>Invictus</em>. Have you? I’m willing to guess the combined grosses of those movies pale next to the gross of <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>. And, in any case, Waltz’s Hans Landa - who seems, at times, a sharper Hannibal Lecter – clearly gives the performance least likely to leave your brain. If only because you’ve actually seen the movie.<br /><br />Furthermore, the other “passed over” actors discussed in this category were as uninspiring as the other nominees. Alfred Molina in <em>An Education</em> was a competently acted saint-parent role in a movie that can only surprise you with how many times you feel like you’ve seen it in other movies without quite being able to name which movie it most reminds you of. That’s true also of Peter Sarsgaard in that movie, whose lot in life seems to be being passed over each year for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. I heard Christian McKay was supposed to be nominated for a movie I’ve barely heard of called <em>Me and Orson Welles</em>, but I wouldn’t know Christian McKay if he slapped me in the fact right now.<br /><br /><strong>Best Supporting Actress:<br />Will and Should Win</strong>: Mo’Nique <em>Precious </em><br /><em>Great Performances Not Nominated:</em> Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>, Paula Patton <em>Precious</em><br /><em>Up In The Air</em> scored that rare double feat of having two Supporting Actress nominees for Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga. I’ve been a fan of Farmiga for some time now, as, it sounds like, much of the acting community has, since her heralded, underseen performance in <em>Down To The Bone</em> as a small-town cokehead. The woman is fearless, and actually that fearlessness truly did underscore the tougher parts of her charming <em>Up In The Air</em> performance. Anna Kendrick, with her mouthy, fast, deluded, sweet performance in <em>Up In The Air</em>, as well, more than earned her nomination. By this point in the Oscar season, though, you’re aware of the power of Mo’Nique’s performance, right? It’s fine to let this part of the <em>Precious </em>praise-wagon run its course. I truly believe the performance will inspire others to truly go into their characters, no matter how dark or upsetting they are, and even more – to love them for their humanity.<br /><br />On the other side, I would’ve loved if <em>Precious</em> was a double nominee here too, as Paula Patton’s do-gooder teacher here probably elicited the most tears of anyone in the movie (and that’s saying a lot – I cried several times in Precious, but more about that later). Same goes for <em>Inglourious Basterds’</em> two powerful, central women. In my praise here, I think that would lead to a category of 6 nominated women for 3 movies, none of whom are Penelope Cruz (nominated for <em>Nine</em>). So be it. Did anyone actually go see <em>Nine</em>? I hear it’s terrible, but I’d like to see how <em>8 ½ </em>becomes a musical. Plus Cruz’s legs looked fantastic in the trailer. Also, I’ve heard from several people that Maggie Gyllenhaal is actually distractingly bad in <em>Crazy Heart</em>, which I regret I haven’t seen, though from afar it reminds me of a less interesting version of <em>Tender Mercies.<br /></em><br /><strong>Best Actor:<br />Will and Should (?) Win:</strong> Jeff Bridges <em>Crazy Heart</em><br /><strong>Great Performances Not Nominated:</strong> Algenes Perez Soto <em>Sugar</em>, Souleymane Sy Savane and Red West <em>Goodbye Solo</em><br />As I said, I haven’t seen <em>Crazy Heart</em>, but I think Jeff Bridges is an extraordinary actor great in everything, so I’ll trust the consensus that he’s terrific. May I recommend seeing 2004’s <em>The Door In The Floor</em>, which I likely would have voted him for Best Actor were I an Oscar voter, and were he nominated… and were he nominated in that fantasy scenario against Jamie Foxx in <em>Ray</em>. In any case, I’m willing to assume that Bridges is more deserving than the two performances I have seen – George Clooney in <em>Up In The Air</em> and Jeremy Renner in <em>The Hurt Locker.<br /></em><br />From the press I’ve read, Morgan Freeman sounds interesting in <em>Invictus</em> and Colin Firth “heartbreaking” in<em> A Single Man</em>. I’m sure this is true, we have very talented actors in movies nowadays. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that we seem to reward only known-named actors for slumming it and playing “ordinary,” yet when indie movies use non-professional actors who effortlessly play “ordinary” people, we assume they’re just going about their daily routine. Yet if you were to watch Perez in <em>Sugar </em>or the two stars of<em> Goodbye Solo</em>, your hearts would ache for them, you’d be fascinated by their every smile, facial gesture, choice, and movement. In fact, it is their lack of apparent effort that is the mark of their amazing gifts. Their movies are both extraordinarily moving and communicative – better, I dare say, than <em>Up In The Air</em> and <em>The Hurt Locker</em>, which are both very good movies. Would it be so wrong for such performances to earn Oscar nominations?<br /><br /><strong>Best Actress:<br />Will Win</strong>: Sandra Bullock <em>The Blind Side<br /></em><strong>Should Win</strong>: Meryl Streep <em>Julie and Julia</em><br /><strong>Great Performances Not Nominated:</strong> Tilda Swinton <em>Julia</em>, Zooey Deschanel <em>500 Days of Summer </em><br />Well, this is to be the year of Bullock’s coronation, joining the ranks of Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, and Renee Zellweger as actors who formerly did serviceable junk, proved their capabilities in more serious work, won Oscars, and can return to making, largely, serviceable junk. Well perhaps that’s unfair – Witherspoon was a great talent in much of her junk, as was Zellweger prior to winning her Oscar for <em>Cold Mountain</em>, which, frankly, she deserved, despite revisionist questioning from a weird legion of undying Shohreh Agdalshoo fans. I haven’t seen <em>The Blind Side</em>, and unless it’s on at my grandparents’ house 20 minutes in (so I can’t convince them to change the channel), I’ll probably never see it.<br /><br />Streep, of course, deserves an Oscar every year. I loved her in <em>Julie and Julia</em>, perhaps slightly less than I loved her a year earlier in <em>Doubt</em> and wish she’d kept Kate Winslett at bay for another year, but Winslett is truly a gift to all acting, so it’s hard to whine too much about that. Their competition is interesting, I suppose. Gabourey Sidibe in <em>Precious </em>provides exactly what I described a moment ago as wanting to see – a refreshing, lived-in performance that is the definition of effortless acting. I hope she continues to act for years, but fear that this may be it for her. Carey Mulligan, on the other hand, is likely to have people begging to cast her. It’s strange, because <em>An Education</em> seems to me as though it might have been called <em>A Movie We Want To Be Nominated For Oscars</em>. When it ended, I felt one emotion – anger for seeing movies so supposedly “good for me” that are about themes handled better elsewhere for decades.<br /><br />Not nominated, I think, is truly the best performance of the year – Tilda Swinton in <em>Julia</em>. This is a woman that can do anything, and unfortunately, her indie movie was seen by even less people than have seen <em>The Last Station</em> (which is also nominated in this category, for its performance by Hellen Mirren, who I’m sure is dignified and captivating). <em>Julia</em> is a truly gripping character-driven thriller in which one train wreck of a woman becomes all there is that we can trust. I don’t want to say too much about the plot because I truly wish that you would see it and get hooked on its surprises and turns. I’ll just say that she is an alcoholic in the movie, and a deeply selfish person, and that you have hopes for her that are as real as they would be for any character you’ll remember rooting for.<br /><br /><strong>Best Director:<br />Will Win:</strong> Kathryn Bigelow <em>The Hurt Locker </em><br /><strong>Should Win</strong>: Quentin Tarantino <em>Inglourious Basterds </em><br /><strong>Should be nominated:</strong> Rahman Bahrani <em>Goodbye Solo</em>, Neil Blomkamp <em>District 9</em>, Wes Anderson <em>Fantastic Mr. Fox</em>, J.J. Abrams <em>Star Trek </em><br />Look, I want to not shit on the Oscars the year that they’re about to give the first female an Oscar for directing. Good for them. I wish, of course, they’d extended diversity in a different direction this year and rewarded a true visionary, Bahrani, who evokes poetry out of what appears to be DV, hand-held simplicity. I wish they looked to people with voices, like Blomkamp and Anderson, and – and I’ll get to <em>Avatar</em> in a minute – big style action that truly blows you away, by which I mean <em>Star Trek</em>.<br /><br /><em>The Hurt Lock</em>er is very good. <em>Avatar</em> is very good, and truly is the first movie designed be soaked in using the 3D format, for which, if it should win any category, it’s this one. What a vision to pull off, James Cameron is truly a distinguished director. I also very much enjoyed <em>Up In The Air </em>and cried a lot at <em>Precious</em>, which sort of makes me resent it. Tarantino, to me, is the filmmaker with a voice, the real deal who – like we allege of Cameron – keeps proving himself by delivering top quality movies. No one expected <em>Inglourious Basterds</em> to be as extraordinarily compelling as it is, a tense tête-à-tête in one fiery conversation after another. Funny, deeply entertaining, entirely gripping. This is Tarantino at his finest, and – to invoke an age-old Oscar argument – he’s a deeply important director who has affected movies and never won. Let’s give him one while he still deserves it.<br /><br /><strong>Best Picture:<br />Will Win:</strong> <em>The Hurt Locker </em><br /><strong>Should Win</strong>: <em>District 9 </em><br /><strong>Should be nominated: </strong><em>Star Trek, Julia, Goodbye Solo, Paranormal Activity, Fantastic Mr. Fox </em><br />Yup, those are the nominees I would choose if I had to get up to 10, along with some group of the ones nominated. Still, given all of that, I would pick <em>District 9</em>, my best argument for why the 10-nominees thing is a great idea. What an original, gripping, completely innovative movie. I remember looking at my friend 20 to 30 minutes in the movie and saying “I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen in this movie.” None. I didn’t know if the aliens were going to break out in a musical number. You spend so much of the movie wondering what kind of movie you were even in – is this satire? A mockumentary? Sci-fi? A zombie movie?<br /><br />The point is that <em>District 9</em> to me proves how great we are at making movies. All of those expectations only make the real unpredictability of the movie more satisfying. You find yourself invested in aliens, in the people hunting the aliens, believing in places you’d never find yourself believing. For a while the movie seems ridiculous, but then you think, well these things happen in the world all the time – why wouldn’t we react this way if there were aliens? I’ve heard people say to me, whining, that it’s just a movie telling us to be nice to other cultures. I disagree, it simply chronicles the many ways humans react to things that are unknown to them. It chronicles our responses and behaviors, yet uses them to tell a taut, mesmerizing thriller. There’s absolutely nothing like it, and it towers above some very very good movies it’s nominated against.<br /><br />Should I talk about those? I suppose my opinions on <em>Precious, Avatar, An Education, Inglourious Basterds,</em> and <em>The Hurt Locker </em>are up in this list somewhere. They’re all quite good. I could be a little more explicit about <em>Up In The Air</em>, which is very timely and competent, though I admit I know I was supposed to fall in love with it and never quite got there. <em>Up</em> is wonderful… but also gets a little “so what” as it keeps going, though I love its creativity and emotion. I haven’t seen <em>A Simple Man</em> but probably will at some point. <em>The Blind Side</em> is a likely terrible movie I’m glad is nominated – my grandmother loved it, and some movie should represent the Grandmothers of the world if movie geeks like me get <em>District 9</em> listed in the Top 10.<br /><br />So there are my picks for this year. We made a lot of great movies in 2009 and have a lot of great talent who will pick up Oscars. At the end of the day, that means there is probably less to whine about than you’d think.<br /><br /><strong>Note:</strong> One category I have to put in another word about is Best Animated Short Film. A great, great 17 minute movie called "Logorama" is nominated, and I’ll cheer very loudly if it wins.<span style="font-size:+0;"></span></div></div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-22716405453810652062010-02-25T13:28:00.000-08:002010-02-25T13:52:02.313-08:00The Synecdoche Syndrome<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivt-HhT6vsQnDNO0wmrq82rNvYiYZ8K4Fx14g1WCSJwaykKCOO5e1He1Fi-YjmS68Jk71-FlDuYnhMRTtcATzUtU6fU518F89XQxEnN-zcmTZ_KDCXqefTW_5DsCxUH5vUVFO_/s1600-h/8+1.2.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 244px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5442296396994012194" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivt-HhT6vsQnDNO0wmrq82rNvYiYZ8K4Fx14g1WCSJwaykKCOO5e1He1Fi-YjmS68Jk71-FlDuYnhMRTtcATzUtU6fU518F89XQxEnN-zcmTZ_KDCXqefTW_5DsCxUH5vUVFO_/s320/8+1.2.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksVGlWxZ4JL29NME-279veMpUZsQOnfuo_KDTesb6nQX7E2Uu3EIt2FPzf-H06XgjXckKefFtkEo_8c2MuBfhE9RpvGT4rH5Nc54WS00hLj53FK8aP2fxezaIc6I0ms2wA_dF/s1600-h/synecdochenyfirstphoto.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 178px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5442296387779010562" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksVGlWxZ4JL29NME-279veMpUZsQOnfuo_KDTesb6nQX7E2Uu3EIt2FPzf-H06XgjXckKefFtkEo_8c2MuBfhE9RpvGT4rH5Nc54WS00hLj53FK8aP2fxezaIc6I0ms2wA_dF/s320/synecdochenyfirstphoto.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div>The <em>Synecdoche</em> Syndrome<br /><br />It took Roger Ebert declaring it the best movie of the 2000s, but I have finally seen Charlie Kaufmann’s <em>Synecdoche, New York</em>. Have you heard of it? It made around $4 million domestically, which doesn’t quite recoup its $20 million budget, or even properly pay for the massive set-within-a-set that creates the movies meta-textual centerpiece.<br /><br />While Ebert and other critics are certainly big fans, that gross suggests it didn’t connect elsewhere. My beloved film critic sage Owen Gleiberman led the brigade of <em>Synecdoche</em> haters on its release, giving the movie a D+, stating, essentially, he wanted to give up on the movie and declare the whole thing “the structure of psychosis.”<br /><br />More than that, though, Gleiberman – an extraordinary writer always beholden to his viewpoint – seemingly reacted this strongly based on what he perceived others’ responses to be, and accurately predicted (not that anyone would really do otherwise) that a cadre of “eggheads” would declare the movie a masterpiece. Certainly Ebert believes so. Humble as ever, Ebert stated that he saw the movie a first time, “believed it to be a great movie, and that I had not mastered it.” Interesting viewpoint.<br /><br />Ebert’s sense of the movie has more of a grasp of contemporary standards over all. When is a movie allowed to be a confusing masterpiece, rather than just confusing? We all know <em>2001 </em>was released to baffles in 1969, but enough people were able to get behind that to make it now considered a classic. What about the career of Ingmar Bergmann, who essentially popularized the pretentious, challenging film? Reading Ebert’s comments, I was reminded that so many of these artists of difficult, important movies were not always considered to be such forward-thinking geniuses – those movies too had to be released and reacted to. Likely that initial reaction was bafflement.<br /><br />My reaction to <em>Synecdoche </em>is sort of bafflement, but sort of that it wasn’t quite worth the bother. As a declared “love it or hate it” movie, it gives an ample amount of ammunition to each side. There are scenes that are cracklingly fun in Synecdoche, and touches of absurdity that make you appreciate the ability of a movie to travel in its own weirdness. There’s the house Samantha Morton’s Hazel lives in, which is always on fire, prompting Hazel to voice concern, like 20 years before her death (who can keep track of this timeline anyway), that she’s concerned about “dying in the fire.” Instead, the house feels cozy, and ridiculous. There are the hilarious scenes with Hope Davis as a rather terrible psychologist who attempts to sell her book Getting Better to her clients for $40 and writes in one unrelated bit of pep vagueness after another – a run in between her and protagonist Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) on a plane is memorably demented and puzzling. I also loved its time-keeps-on-rapidly-ticking-away pace that makes the years sweep by, which reminded me, in its way, of the David Chase-directed final episode of <em>The Sopranos</em>. Then too monumental events seemed to be going by, like life does, before we could even get a good grasp of them.<br /><br />There are moments too, through the nuttiness, that something interesting and deeply true is hit upon. Caden asks Hazel, somewhere 10ish years past their failed romance, to look at him as she once did, with love and awe. It’s a theme of the movie that people are adept at ruining each other’s pristine images of one another. That idea is ripe for a movie, and actually, despite its logical jumping jacks, <em>Synecdoche </em>comes at that theme with admirable clarity.<br /><br />But then, there are also scenes that seem rather obsessed with saying something, I don’t know what it is, about obsessing over a few characters’ sexuality. Or the stuff about Jungian psychology. There’s that play within the play and the set within the set and the play within the play within the play. I have to list some of these things out to make sure they were there at all. Plus I have to think no one would write a character named Millicent Weems without that name signifying… something. In describing the movie, Kaufmann said he wanted to move away from gimmicks like "mind portals and memory erasing" - describing, of course, his deeply-accessible-by-comparison scripts of <em>Being John Malkovich </em>and <em>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</em>. Well, I hate to point out to him that his "gimmicks" are what work best for him - the burning house is a gimmick, so is Davis's wacky psychology book. In effect, his "play," given more attention, might be a great gimmick in itself.<br /><br />Watching <em>Synecdoche </em>and trying to describe it with the same approach as other movies is rather tiring and unwise. Yet most movie reviews stick to just that, strangely. Says Emily Rems of <em>Premiere</em>: “At turns as neurotic and nebbishy as any Woody Allen flick, as creepy and disorienting as your favorite "Twilight Zone" episode, and as steeped in magical realism as the most moving Márquez novel, <em>Synecdoche </em>may not be the feel-good date movie of the year.” Ok then. Or Michael Phillips of the <em>Chicago Tribune</em>, “As a director, Kaufman isn't yet his own best salesman. He's not enough of a visual stylist to sell his script's most challenging conceits. But the cast rises to a very strange and rich occasion.” Well that’s clear then. This is like a disorienting Woody Allen movie with a good cast. So, it’s like <em>Melinda & Melinda</em> then?<br /><br />Well, actually, I guess it sort of is like <em>Deconstructing Harry</em>, which I assume is the “Woody Allen flick” that Rems attempts to make a trend out of in that sentence by adding the word “any.” In that movie, characters drift in and out of a characters’ mind and are replaced by their fictional counterparts. What he dreams comes true. Actually, now that I think about it, I should buy me a copy of <em>Deconstructing Harry</em>; what a terrific movie.<br /><br />There is a scale of what these movies that are “difficult” and “puzzling” must sit on. On one end, you have the junk – the <em>Ranaldo and Clara</em>s or <em>Inland Empires</em>, bits of brain-scrambling randomness that pretend an overriding concept unifies its spasticness and makes up for how numbing the experience of watching it is (both mentally and physically – I can’t remember when my ass fell asleep in <em>Inland Empire</em>). On the other end, you have <em>Wild Strawberries </em>and <em>Mulholland Drive</em> and <em>8 ½ </em>and Robert Altman’s <em>3 Women</em> – movies that are strange and exciting and unusual and reveal beautiful, well crafted layers underneath their prickliness.<br /><br /><em>Synecdoche</em>, I think, is somewhere shy of the middle there, meandering ever slightly to the junk side of the scale. Or so I thought. I suppose I like the opportunity to think about life and what happens in our world, and like a movie speaking in its images and ideas and not worrying about what “sense” it makes. Altman says he wrote <em>3 Women</em> transcribing a dream he’d had the night before. What’s that movie about? Why, a woman who infiltrates another woman’s life, or a painted swimming pool, or maybe the delusions and shifting alliances shared by women, who are all acting out roles in each other’s worlds. Something like that. Actually, I rewatched <em>8 ½</em> the day after I saw <em>Synecdoche</em>, and I think it launches the best defense for that movie. In a spa, Guido, <em>8 ½</em>’s main character, gets spoken to by a fat writer he walks down a set of stairs with. “You’re dealing with the complexities of the human mind, you should at least be clear about it.” Fellini clearly has little patience for this mindset.<br /><br />And why should he? Life, our minds, are a mess, after all. Movies and writing can get at a portion of it. The brilliance of <em>8 ½</em> is that it is, in fact, so lucid and well conceived an evocation of the difficulty to reflect life and wonder in art, to express what is actually true. The calling card (or, my favorite quote) of that movie is a line by its wandering critic: “It is better to destroy than to create what is inessential.” Fellini no longer wanted to tell a boy-meets-girl story and instead wanted to focus on what really drives us and exists in our minds.<br /><br /><em>Synecdoche</em> has probably received more comparison to<em> 8 ½ </em>than any other movie. If so, Charlie Kaufmann should be very flattered. <em>8 ½,</em> derided by its detractors as a movie which flailingly tells the story of a director flailing, is actually the most lucid movie ever conceived about writers block, or artistic stagnation, or why we do what we do. <em>Synecdoche,</em> by never quite giving limits or sense to its central play, is never really about art, or at least it has very little interest in the “art” concept except as something marginal, like that burning house.<br /><br />But again, here I go trying to define the rules that <em>Synecdoche</em> broke in order to prove it as a less than worthy movie. It’s just too damn much work for the thoughts you get out of it. Now, I love movies that make me work. I’m up for the job. But for this? <em>Synecdoche</em> is sort of like a long conversation with your very smart, sad friend over drinks – which is to say like any drunken ramble, it hits home once in a while. But have you really not had these thoughts before? Which ones can <em>Synecdoche</em> claim as its own?<br /><br />These are the questions <em>Synecdoche </em>really makes me ask. I love movies that make me question my world, our approach to seeing it, movies whose ideas and approaches make me want to experience them over and over again. Yet is it doing nothing but using themes of man’s ultimate unhappiness in the world as a justification for a rambling incoherent movie, or the other way around? I guess I simply mean that these senses, as any good writing professor would tell you, need to be reined in a little. And thinking so doesn’t make you incapable of deep thought.</div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-1037467617073266952010-02-02T16:43:00.000-08:002010-02-02T16:45:18.366-08:00Green Day: Know Your Enemy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVs_cnrQewlYeWcLG54NlbE0lV9PraWqPH7Eh50tuEWafxoZ86cR4_rL5sS-Qzjja4DHtUVvfh_Wen79EJlS13_ANpbOTK_pPhVM3EAAVcbn9Q8qD1MWQojwxHwoV41uMVP9eJ/s1600-h/green+day.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVs_cnrQewlYeWcLG54NlbE0lV9PraWqPH7Eh50tuEWafxoZ86cR4_rL5sS-Qzjja4DHtUVvfh_Wen79EJlS13_ANpbOTK_pPhVM3EAAVcbn9Q8qD1MWQojwxHwoV41uMVP9eJ/s320/green+day.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433811787411418770" border="0" /></a>
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mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>I had a thought about Green Day winning a Grammy yesterday for Best Rock Album for <i style="">21<sup>st</sup> Century Breakdown</i>.<span style=""> </span>In a way, this is unsurprising – Green Day won their first Grammy for <i style="">Dookie</i> back sometime in the mid-90s (some things in my pop culture sponge mind stay put – I can say with certainty that they won the Best Alternative Album there in 1996, announced on stage by Melissa Etheridge), and the Grammy win this week merely cements the band’s incredible ability to have managed sustaining life in the pop-punk form.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>One only needs to look at the past 15 years or so in music since <i style="">Dookie</i> – from Blink 182’s dumbasses-with-tattoos-and-shimmying-pop-melodies to the no-jet-black-hair-out-of-place emergence of emo bands 5 years ago, Green Day, all of whom are now in their 40s, clearly have done what they do very successfully.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>But I feel the need to voice my sort of objection to <i style="">21<sup>st</sup> Century Breakdown</i> and also reaffirm my love for it.<span style=""> </span>A couple of months ago, I named Green Day’s <i style="">American Idiot</i> the best album of the 2000s, a judgment I very much stand by.<span style=""> </span>Actually it was an album only a Green Day could pull off.<span style=""> </span>It was a last stand for albums that absolutely must be heard straight through, from beginning to end.<span style=""> </span>It was full of righteous, compelling, intoxicating anger, and in anthems like “Holiday,” no rational person could possibly hear the song and argue that their defiance wasn’t totally compelling.<span style=""> </span>Yet the album was also pop shined to perfection, its biggest hit, “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” featured not a yell or grunt in sight and succeeded on the very solemn nature of its melody.<span style=""> </span>Hearing that <i style="">American Idiot </i>was being adapted into a Broadway musical then (the performers of which joined Green Day on stage at the Grammy’s for “21 Guns”) should not be a bit surprising – the band even spoke of <i style="">West Side Story</i> as one of their key influences.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Well, <i style="">21<sup>st</sup> Century Breakdown</i> seems to be a massive success, showing the success of <i style="">American Idiot </i>to be far from a fluke.<span style=""> </span>But <i style="">21<sup>st</sup> Century Breakdown</i>, I know <i style="">American Idiot, </i>I’ve loved <i style="">American Idiot, </i>and you, sir, are no <i style="">American Idiot</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Which isn’t to say <i style="">21<sup>st</sup> Century Breakdown</i> is without charm.<span style=""> </span>Actually, it suffers from an overabundance of the ambition of <i style="">American Idiot.<span style=""> </span>American Idiot, </i>an old-school concept album a la <i style="">Tommy</i> succeeded in <i style="">spite</i> of its tendency towards grandiloquence.<span style=""> </span>If anything flagged in the album, it was the plot-heavy songs the like of “Extraordinary Girl” that purported to “tell” us something about its “characters.”<span style=""> </span>Still, considering the energy around it, the song was never such a drag as to hurt the album, and indeed, some of these “plot” songs yielded moments of spitfire triumph, like the speed-metal “St. Jimmy” and the transporting “Letterbomb.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span><i style="">21<sup>st</sup> Century Breakdown</i> is absolutely, deadeningly weighed down by its sense of story.<span style=""> </span>Is there a story?<span style=""> </span>It alleges to take place in three parts, introduces a chick named Gloria, calls her the “last of the American girls,” rallies against a Christian’s inferno, and winds up, I don’t know, giving a eulogy to America or something.<span style=""> </span>Yet I just described the 4 or 5 worst songs on the record, which already has 15 damn songs.<span style=""> </span>And try as it might, not a one of them is as good as “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” or “Holiday.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Let me pause for a second to talk about “21 Guns” and my sadness at how much I hate “21 Guns.”<span style=""> </span>I cannot, still, every time I hear this song <i style="">not</i> think about another song it reminds me of – Heart’s “What About Love.”<span style=""> </span>That song, full of theatrical keyboard bombast, is the type of song only someone who, like me, was a child in the late 80s and early 90s could love.<span style=""> </span>It’s fun and cheesy and ridiculous and impossible not to sing along to.<span style=""> </span>Heart, remade in the 80s, is everything to love about the 80s. <span style=""> </span>“21 Guns” pretends to be a punk ballad, which should be a form Green Day knows a lot about as they basically perfected the form on their last album with “Wake Me Up When September Ends.”<span style=""> </span>“21 Guns” sucks.<span style=""> </span>I understand that Billie Joe Armstrong wanted to put in a song about when to give up, wanted to fill it with bombastic resignation, and wanted it to be resonant in spite of itself.<span style=""> </span>It is, however, not especially good at that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Actually bombastic resignation is not Armstrong’s strong suit.<span style=""> </span>This is what I mean about the part o f<i style="">21st Century Breakdown </i>that I love.<span style=""> </span>I think there’s a good album hiding inside of it, one full of the type of pissy, easy to swallow anger the band has always made its strong suit, and it would’ve been a terrific record if he’d ignored absolutely everything else.<span style=""> </span>Let me start with that other single of Green Day’s from the record that everyone maligns – “Know Your Enemy.”<span style=""> </span>Try as I might to listen to why this song is terrible, I think it’s extraordinary.<span style=""> </span>Two chords, firingly loud, not overly complicated, ridiculously catchy – this is a pop-punk masterpiece.<span style=""> </span>This is, in fact, the album’s best contender to stack up to “Holiday.”<span style=""> </span>Or maybe that’s “East Jesus Nowhere,” or “The Static Age,” or “Horseshoes and Hand Grenades,” despite that song getting bogged down in a plot-bound chanting of “G-L-O-R-I-A” that’s pretty annoying.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>There’s one other very good song on the record, and it is, in fact, the exact type of power ballad that “21 Guns” shoots the moon on becoming.<span style=""> </span>The song, “Last Night On Earth,” is tuneful and pretty, but actually it’s the exact opposite of “21 Guns” – thematically at least.<span style=""> </span>“If I lose everything in the fire,” Armstrong sings, “I’m sending all my love to you.”<span style=""> </span>Or so I think of it at least.<span style=""> </span>Ones song is about knowing when resignation is appropriate, the other about refusing to resign.<span style=""> </span>I hope it surprises no one to learn that the Green Day I love is much better at the latter.</p> Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-63754975914685106242009-12-31T12:12:00.000-08:002009-12-31T15:00:25.610-08:00The Best Movies of the Decade<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEionUvEGt59nE_JULuptPiKpRZCtbWadL6po7WZ5-XPiyxuJ7Jfm-eejc0cyQFc6vP8Espv6UD4209B9YgivnbIVrzoMUfU7YD3V7OZ42nznAZrF5iB1ZiqWhSvt-I1G3FHzIFb/s1600-h/eternal_sunshine.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 280px; float: left; height: 267px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421504559532878674" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEionUvEGt59nE_JULuptPiKpRZCtbWadL6po7WZ5-XPiyxuJ7Jfm-eejc0cyQFc6vP8Espv6UD4209B9YgivnbIVrzoMUfU7YD3V7OZ42nznAZrF5iB1ZiqWhSvt-I1G3FHzIFb/s320/eternal_sunshine.jpg" border="0" /></a> I've been thinking long and hard about it, and rewriting a list. Perhaps that is too much thought, but a person, a writer, can only be true to what he thinks. This is the best I got - these are the movies that most excited, moved, surprised me the last ten years. I no longer care about being representational or talking about movies I thought were "significant." Some of these movies are on others' lists, some are not, but the sensation was the same - watching each of these movies, something struck me that I loved, something I hadn't seen before or couldn't remember when I'd seen. There are maybe 100 others this decade that were outstanding, but these ten (or, I guess technically, 14) are the ones I remember the overwhelming experience of the whole thing.<br /><br /><div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>The Top Ten Movies of the 2000s</strong>:</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>1. <em>Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind</em></strong><em> </em>(2004)</div><br /><div>Let me describe what watching <em>Eternal Sunshine</em> did for me in 2004. I stood up in the theater, near the end, as Jim Carrey nearly allowed Kate Winslett to walk away forever. I yelled "What are you doing?! Go after her!" I never felt a love story like this that looked at the inevitability of the failure of human interactions over time, but fell on their side anyway. It reminded me of the end of <em>Annie Hall</em> and of nothing, I had never seen anything like it. It could only be made in our time, and yet, it is timeless.</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong><em>2. I'm Not There </em></strong>(2007)</div><br /><div>The height of esoteric moviemaking, yet for those initiated, it's completely unequaled. Do you learn about Bob Dylan in Todd Ha<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLO-HkOwS9xtdjOiYLepyVGSl2oJzFqr0ZboMs4-mBCB6aircK7rQzWuAarWD7OuyI_0tmRMuxVQ3IQM0LjbogxeiG-cMM1Lv8N82HOTnaTsFBhyqQDe3WXXbqiAjyw12kpJKe/s1600-h/I'm+not+there.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 192px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421504554268465218" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLO-HkOwS9xtdjOiYLepyVGSl2oJzFqr0ZboMs4-mBCB6aircK7rQzWuAarWD7OuyI_0tmRMuxVQ3IQM0LjbogxeiG-cMM1Lv8N82HOTnaTsFBhyqQDe3WXXbqiAjyw12kpJKe/s320/I'm+not+there.jpg" border="0" /></a>ynes' fake-named, expressionistic, occasionally dream-speak creation of what Dylan's denunciation of identity is? No, I suppose - I knew enough going in and filled in the story with the "truth" I knew. But yes, in that I learned about identity, the quest for who we are and how we see ourselves. Some scenes are beautiful, some are puzzling, some are unmistakably sad and lonely. In some, "Dylan" (or, whoever he's being called at the moment) rejects all we thought we knew of him. Yet do we not feel the same pull sometimes? To see meaning in our moments and yet feel the need to change into someone else entirely? To me, leaving <em>I'm Not There</em> as though I was in a different world, I felt as though I no longer understood who we were, and that I was closer to understanding.</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>3. The <em>Lord of the Rings</em> Trilogy </strong>(2001-2003)</div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwkXwlkDTl13tEBH-sQ8Hm2nVmlJmGdNfjOY4YAT8qWZ7gRz1xE8Cv20TplIJFk05AVkPLbEjyIkf7amIz5hYlEFlRwiAcsFPguhefmWhGMULiKADdhAUZjCFBOag_aP6vmCKJ/s1600-h/return+of+the+king.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 182px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421508761861852482" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwkXwlkDTl13tEBH-sQ8Hm2nVmlJmGdNfjOY4YAT8qWZ7gRz1xE8Cv20TplIJFk05AVkPLbEjyIkf7amIz5hYlEFlRwiAcsFPguhefmWhGMULiKADdhAUZjCFBOag_aP6vmCKJ/s320/return+of+the+king.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>You sit in <em>The Return of the King</em> and you think "I cannot remember seeing a story like this." That is if you can stop watching, if you're no longer drawn to the screen. For that, I cannot just single out <em>Return of the King</em>. The friendship of <em>Fellowship of the Rings</em> and battle of <em>The Two Towers</em> are essential too. I never read a word of JRR Tolkein, but the movies speak to me of what is important about him. This is what happens when every weapon in a filmmaker's arsenal is employed correctly.</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>4. <em>What Time Is It There?</em> </strong>(2001) and <strong><em>Yi Yi</em> </strong>(2000)</div><br /><div>I love movies about <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRQcgBh7fMWD21sMJa7NJFE4dSn7-pr6rFY3hIkjPZLHl53p11Sstq-nI9uLz9kOG0uSUIGD2uCrwlnLnilYtCu4sV3cFmvP5CFuRs8yK35hYAPrTsDNHe3lnLwisfqxxY0cus/s1600-h/what+time.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 175px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421507172048488178" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRQcgBh7fMWD21sMJa7NJFE4dSn7-pr6rFY3hIkjPZLHl53p11Sstq-nI9uLz9kOG0uSUIGD2uCrwlnLnilYtCu4sV3cFmvP5CFuRs8yK35hYAPrTsDNHe3lnLwisfqxxY0cus/s320/what+time.jpg" border="0" /></a>watching others, and I combine these two because they're a brand of Taiwanese movie<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUetSIPFZ8wKVjI2C5A-wGbF9uHuRgA-uhjgcw7w9a5Z2qBV7fJ0z7twrGQPsDMiFt1KINp30PhZp7HBYxvHAuKWGmtofMzZMPSeDhN3YzHCMJtxcnuyB-nUi63f_d0wgw_ESL/s1600-h/yi+yi2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 312px; float: left; height: 320px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421510066798979730" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUetSIPFZ8wKVjI2C5A-wGbF9uHuRgA-uhjgcw7w9a5Z2qBV7fJ0z7twrGQPsDMiFt1KINp30PhZp7HBYxvHAuKWGmtofMzZMPSeDhN3YzHCMJtxcnuyB-nUi63f_d0wgw_ESL/s320/yi+yi2.jpg" border="0" /></a>s that simply observe. In Tsai Ming-Laing's <em>What Time Is It There?</em> they observe the sensation of loss, of disconnection, of feeling without understanding of the movements and ease of everyone else, of wondering what others' experiences could possibly mean, because ours, well, we're not sure about those. Edward Yang's <em>Yi Yi</em> is, perhaps, more "story" oriented, but it too is about observing how others interact, and make sense of the world. More humanist and less speculative, <em>Yi Yi</em> is about the way we can love everyone, even if they do not love each other, or if they act in ways we cannot condone.</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>5. <em>Amelie</em> </strong>(2001)</div><br /><div>I looked at my frien<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0OCGSWv0I5VctClPHqfKEw0qHADv-vX0Lv7wvo8bTkM5QU8BqAr9iQvm_VOBuQ64NVAYD9y_ur5Lg6RHRob8Rn6k8D8X2Tso28Vn9w4QUdbAVAG2fHI4qfBbKDDo0OdyhywYE/s1600-h/amelie.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 214px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421504565524731042" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0OCGSWv0I5VctClPHqfKEw0qHADv-vX0Lv7wvo8bTkM5QU8BqAr9iQvm_VOBuQ64NVAYD9y_ur5Lg6RHRob8Rn6k8D8X2Tso28Vn9w4QUdbAVAG2fHI4qfBbKDDo0OdyhywYE/s320/amelie.jpg" border="0" /></a>d Melinda while watching <em>Amelie</em> in Boulder at a theater that no longer exists. I have not spoken to her now in several years. It was at the end of the first sequence, which introduces us to characters by going through their purses, telling us the things they like to do, pointing the camera to the sky and telling us the shapes they see in the clouds. I couldn't remember smiling like that, perhaps ever, and maybe I still don't. She felt the same, and the feeling, the beautiful, floating feeling came with you out of the theater. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's movie is a love song to movies, and to happiness itself.</div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>6. <em>Mulholland Drive</em> </strong>(2001)</div><br /><div>I was willing to give up on <em>Mulholland Drive, </em>too, but then I read a piece about an interpretation of the movie, and<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1CBN9tLv6duWnEUuZgAG1ZRSqzR1Ktwg8gX8YkwjLNf2uluIaqKBPnZnVHJNf1zZgpZPef659-BUETRAoQFS3Ms7VGUxVyNHoRw-TT6W2VQkMNN5RQJJ3pWEoq6myIMGwcOq/s1600-h/mulhollanddrive3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 212px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421508769235224322" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1CBN9tLv6duWnEUuZgAG1ZRSqzR1Ktwg8gX8YkwjLNf2uluIaqKBPnZnVHJNf1zZgpZPef659-BUETRAoQFS3Ms7VGUxVyNHoRw-TT6W2VQkMNN5RQJJ3pWEoq6myIMGwcOq/s320/mulhollanddrive3.jpg" border="0" /></a> then another. Pieces started to gain clarity to me. My father told me of his interpretation, so I would watch it again. I would marvel at the pieces I could no longer fit into what was now my own interpretation of the movie. There are scenes I love that I perhaps think I know what they "mean," but it's the spell I love. A man at a diner who speaks of a dream, then the dream exists. The old couple in the cab whose disturbing smile never ceases. Naomi Watts talking in lonely honesty while no one listens at a later dinner. David Lynch truly made his masterpiece with <em>Mulholland Drive</em>, and truthfully, it's the movie we'll all remember him for.</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>7. <em>Kill Bill</em>, vol. 1 and 2</strong> (2003-2004)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWvwzG27VewDh7HLxUUT9zQ7fC3LJDq3Rd2W6IeuNIls7LCIZsrlWOWfgZkLCqEHP2hd3zJGIeKXE646Ag4vQkee7RsoQ38aCwQDQSluVvzd5st8lm1nyZ73ZhrAH4aQdj2XOx/s1600-h/KillBillVol1_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 214px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421508765359601730" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWvwzG27VewDh7HLxUUT9zQ7fC3LJDq3Rd2W6IeuNIls7LCIZsrlWOWfgZkLCqEHP2hd3zJGIeKXE646Ag4vQkee7RsoQ38aCwQDQSluVvzd5st8lm1nyZ73ZhrAH4aQdj2XOx/s320/KillBillVol1_1.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div>I think my favorie scene in all of the <em>Kill Bill</em> movies is the opening scene in <em>Kill Bill</em> 2, the black and white western moment when Bill, playing a flute, speaks to his bride with a wide smile. He knows what he's there for, and to an extent, so does she. As her fiance comes outside, she whispers for him to call her another name, and he does. Or is my favorite scene the brilliant unbroken shot in <em>Kill Bill 1</em> that Tarantino repeated in <em>Inglourious Basterds</em> when the camera goes up the stairs, down, into the kitchen, around, to the bathroom, and back up? Or is it when Beatrix's hand, bruised from Pai Mei's tutelage, eats her rice, and learns to form itself again? Or is it when Lucy Liu kicks off her shoes into the snow before her battle with Bea? I never want to have to decide, I only want to see them all again.</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>8. <em>All The Real Girls</em> </strong>(2002)</div><br /><div>Some scenes in David Gord<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXiqVZWDq4royqpVRCJuNzdpc2ZY56VWWPwGEGv4Qyn91O0dtcgk14NzsJsd03jNc5MS-8eZ2ShLXo5-Si1ghOrMbfGWlLPIupImq73TEWPa-FFjXGk_vvfCiqo1P4YNx05snC/s1600-h/all+the+real+girls.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 212px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421504575450939154" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXiqVZWDq4royqpVRCJuNzdpc2ZY56VWWPwGEGv4Qyn91O0dtcgk14NzsJsd03jNc5MS-8eZ2ShLXo5-Si1ghOrMbfGWlLPIupImq73TEWPa-FFjXGk_vvfCiqo1P4YNx05snC/s320/all+the+real+girls.jpg" border="0" /></a>on Green's <em>All The Real Girls</em> last only a few seconds, yet you know the hours of which they encompass. A woman tells her friends at a party about a guy she's started dating. Those two stand outside of a door and speak, obliquely, about the night they just had. A man fights with his mother, who is in clown makeup, about his breakup and his sadness. <em>All The Real Girls</em> is, like <em>Eternal Sunshine</em>, about love, but it's also about who we are, and what we give to others in our life, how they change us. It creates its own context by being precise to the moments that may have had beginnings and endings, but shows that the moments that occurred in the middle - the smiling, the honesty - were what mattered.</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>9. <em>25th Hour</em> </strong>(2002)</div><br /><div>I ha<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDlNajRUQUNev6BpNFM7BKSNxxHjgw8XGVmaZd7Nf9fA3SnYac91A-gbywRsrUKyvR7KAfmYKhDJhWRTTui8G5NtNZkO1u7gxolncHkLnmrVddJEa1mlGY48GLqe-L3INlVSOK/s1600-h/25thhour.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 230px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421508756495730546" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDlNajRUQUNev6BpNFM7BKSNxxHjgw8XGVmaZd7Nf9fA3SnYac91A-gbywRsrUKyvR7KAfmYKhDJhWRTTui8G5NtNZkO1u7gxolncHkLnmrVddJEa1mlGY48GLqe-L3INlVSOK/s320/25thhour.jpg" border="0" /></a>ve seen <em>25th Hour </em>three times, and each time I remember, at the movie's end, just how powerful it is. Monty (Ed Norton) is driving to prison by his father (Brian Cox), who speaks to him of a long, glorious alternate world in which he doesn't drive Monty to prison, but instead helps him escape, somewhere far away. He speaks of the life he has, of reuniting with his love Naturelle (Rosario Dawson). It is so achingly beautiful that we think, this must be what happens. Yet we know, with the deliberateness of the previous day that we've seen that nothing that beautiful could possibly happen. <em>25th Hour</em> also speaks of New York after September 11th, and many, writing about it at the end of the decade, focus on this. That is part of it, but it is the part that emphasizes Monty, not necessarily Monty that emphasizes New York. <em>25th Hour</em> is one of Spike Lee's greatest movies because of the humanity of his gaze.</div><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>10. <em>Donnie Darko</em> </strong>(2001)</div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgII2jA6NSaxHXRcR86fqJwOplKj6KdzLZN2xo5GYsj7kFRY7Oli6jjMdLBf1Ij1ayvgyw5G5gYTCw0PcrAVf2WKfr_9PfJKQjN7Wy9VSobdJqmtgGpYgLaUEfEnFJ2DvAJnLBT/s1600-h/donnie.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 203px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421507633449275298" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgII2jA6NSaxHXRcR86fqJwOplKj6KdzLZN2xo5GYsj7kFRY7Oli6jjMdLBf1Ij1ayvgyw5G5gYTCw0PcrAVf2WKfr_9PfJKQjN7Wy9VSobdJqmtgGpYgLaUEfEnFJ2DvAJnLBT/s320/donnie.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Almost a synechdoche for all things cloyingly "indie" and hipster in the decade, <em>Donnie Darko</em>, pre-director's cut, has some of the most riveting, funny, enrapturing loopy storytelling you can remember. The director's cut, perhaps, shows Richard Kelly's true stoner philosopher spirit, but <em>Darko</em> hides that just enough to keep the metaphysical tantalizing and emphasize a story of truth and sacrifice underneath. A true post-Tarantino modern classic, <em>Donnie Darko</em> doesn't need to make sense to work, it simply needs to leave you rapt and puzzled at once.</div></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong><em>And if I had to pick ten more, they might be...</em></strong><br /><em>Junebug, Brokeback Mountain, Michael Clayton, Pan's Labyrinth, The Bourne Supremacy, Talk to Her, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Requiem for a Dream, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The New World</em>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-55299200595554514152009-12-29T13:15:00.000-08:002009-12-29T13:25:18.823-08:00Best of 2009 - The "Real" List<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiEgDdjQdIMr6LGKcn-UC15ST1k9iDrAal1HjpbFbbJMDNWjv-5-YgmrVHUSrImyWPio1f3mHYQbfsPy2bpN7mlsDf2JPxsfYhIYyQ8wz86tcEEc-TzVp179fXOIjV_seT-COQ/s1600-h/yi+yi2.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 312px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420772295005785714" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiEgDdjQdIMr6LGKcn-UC15ST1k9iDrAal1HjpbFbbJMDNWjv-5-YgmrVHUSrImyWPio1f3mHYQbfsPy2bpN7mlsDf2JPxsfYhIYyQ8wz86tcEEc-TzVp179fXOIjV_seT-COQ/s320/yi+yi2.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJmINJIDe3H5z6YAluzwfeHHMNUcrCj9SSOnOJ9VHElYDlIkLQpvG83LiESYkl0AMN47OHv9NYdjsnPxBRpTeiv0xGfQi5bWPegs3wl-B0nggRTMGRLvWBlrwKDAGpuuOuf0mR/s1600-h/Star-Trek-Trailer-Image-28.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 180px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420772287314425714" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJmINJIDe3H5z6YAluzwfeHHMNUcrCj9SSOnOJ9VHElYDlIkLQpvG83LiESYkl0AMN47OHv9NYdjsnPxBRpTeiv0xGfQi5bWPegs3wl-B0nggRTMGRLvWBlrwKDAGpuuOuf0mR/s320/Star-Trek-Trailer-Image-28.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj11zieP0ZDzqknAhbiN5hMFP-DHemvLLzqxOShs1nL_my0Fk_q8rX1P1asQcW1NcY1h0N4RYgngWdXnMqyMLn1q61GEm_eHE0YINazxfxLl1gNRFs2_L6JONis80cM_4g26und/s1600-h/3559290753_06d35dbda9.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420772282468647954" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj11zieP0ZDzqknAhbiN5hMFP-DHemvLLzqxOShs1nL_my0Fk_q8rX1P1asQcW1NcY1h0N4RYgngWdXnMqyMLn1q61GEm_eHE0YINazxfxLl1gNRFs2_L6JONis80cM_4g26und/s320/3559290753_06d35dbda9.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><br />Every year, I like to take a minute to think back and discuss the most important works that I read or heard or saw over the past year, regardless of when they came out or what the rules that govern lists are. Each year, you encounter things that strike you, move you, that weren’t in your life a year earlier. What a year it was for me. I lost my father and started law school. I became busy, and had moments of doubt and darkness. In a way, none of these works reflects that darkness, though maybe I could have included Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell,” which I spoke about at my father’s funeral, or Joni Mitchell’s “The Wolf That Lives In Lindsay,” which inspired me to write about the darkness that lurks in us all. Maybe that would be the most honest way to write.<br /><br />Instead, I had to speak to what is truest to myself, and this year, the things that brought me joy were what meant the most to me. The songs of Yeah Yeah Yeahs that were aggressive and dancy, punky and sweet, dark and light. The books that spoke of artists experimenting at the fringes. The tears and honesty of extended world of Yi Yi, Prince on stage, and a remembrance of all the great music of this decade. This is what I felt this year, this is what I saw myself in.<br /><br /><strong>1. “Zero,” “Heads Will Roll,” “Softshock,” “Skeletons” Yeah Yeah Yeahs<br /></strong>I had had Yeah Yeah Yeahs on my iPod and even loved a song or two of theirs, but I didn’t really hear Yeah Yeah Yeahs until I saw them at Sasquatch over Memorial Day. There, all the rumored charisma of Karen O on stage, I realized, had been massively understated. On stage she’s a god, she’s totally transfixing, bringing ferocity and context to the primitivity of each song. She’s this generation’s Prince or Bowie.<br /><br />Still, it’s as though this only set the stage for the ascension of all of the great Yeah Yeah Yeahs music to join my iPod. By the time my iPod crashed in October, there were 10 songs of theirs in my Top 30 most played, and in the top 4 were these, the first four tracks on this year’s <em>It’s Blitz</em>, the songs that absolutely defined my year. From the energy of “Zero,” the dance defiance of “Heads Will Roll” and the soft lycra-led dance ebullience of “Softshock,” you see a side of YYYs you never would have predicted but seemed to be there all along – the part that embraced the dancing, synth-raised pop lover in all of us. “Zero” is a song that must be blasted, and was, I think, the song of the summer. “Heads Will Roll,” which opened that Sasquatch performance, capitalizes on all of Karen O’s aggression only to command you to “dance til you’re dead.” “Softshock” could have been made by Pat Benatar, but only if she had been this awesome.<br /><br />And “Skeletons?” Well, “Skeletons” got me through the rest of the year, its synth simplicity that is like the sun setting and feeling alone, Karen O’s voice trembling in polygraph tremors on that “e” of the minimal line “Skeleton: me.” You’re moved with the drum sticks and synthesizers, bowled over by the intimacy. The disappointment of <em>It’s Blitz</em> is that YYYs didn’t have the conviction to make an entire album of the synth-heavy 80’s sound. The triumph is that these songs entered and completely dominated my world, shocking me into realizing they hadn’t been part of who I was all along.<br /><br /><strong>2. <em>Goodbye 20th Century </em>by David Browne</strong>, and <strong><em>We Got The Neutron Bomb</em> by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen</strong><br />I released myself from the need to read books that fit into certain categories this year – I’m not sure if I read any novels to completion or finished a memoir. I think I finished Go Tell It On The Mountain, which was great, and read some short stories and essays. But really what I did was allow myself to admit the books that I treat like candy – stuff that informs me of the works I can’t get enough of. Sonic Youth has always been a band like that for me – noisy, wildly different, daring, and esoteric enough to feel like by being such a big fan of theirs, I was in on the world’s greatest, most powerful secret. David Browne, a former music critic for Entertainment Weekly, wrote <em>Goodbye 20th Century</em>, and I wonder if he understands what a gift he gave me. These songs and albums that I’ve appreciated now for ten years since I was introduced to them became so much fuller in the wake of stories about their creation – Thurston Moore and Lydia Lunch scaring bus passengers as they essentially devised “Death Valley ‘69” on a bus ride home! The pop and yell Lee Ranaldo yells out during “In The Kingdom #19” was from Thurston lighting a firecracker! Ranaldo reminiscing that he loved the title of <em>Washing Machine</em> because it felt, to him, “like cleansing ourselves of <em>Dirty</em>” (<em>Dirty</em> being their astonishing 1992 album that showed the Youth in peak, marketable grunge form – and clearly could not last). This was an astonishing portrait of a band at their vital peak.<br /><br />Couple that with the wacky, rollickingly entertaining oral history <em>We Got The Neutron Bomb</em>, and you have a great one-two punch of fringe music writing. <em>Neutron Bomb</em> tells the story of the LA punk movement of the 70s and 80s as one long overlapping interview, gathering bits and pieces from books, tv specials, interviews, and compilations from the voices who experienced the time. It plays like VH1’s old Legends show, that told a story entirely through the voices of people recalling them. I remember the moment each of the interviewees spoke of David Bowie walking through LA wearing a dress. Just that movement started young fans like Pat Smear and Darby Crash, who then, not being able to play a note, took the stage plunging a microphone into a jar of peanut butter, and then, somewhere down the line, became The Germs, who I’m told are still touring. In <em>Goodbye 20th Century</em>, Lee Ranaldo, bored during an early, terrifying performance of “The Burning Spear” strapped a drill to a microphone while they were playing. That drill is still in the final take. That’s the artist spirit I love, and could revel in forever.<br /><br /><strong>3. Rewatching my favorite movies: <em>The Sweet Hereafter, Mean Streets, Nashville, Playtime, Full Metal Jacket</em><br /></strong>The rest of the world’s been onto this for years, and it sounds stupid, but something struck me rewatching each of these old movies – the first time, however long ago it was, was never enough. With <em>Full Metal Jacket</em>, I realized it had been since I was in high school ten years ago since I’d seen the whole thing, and yet I thought of it as a favorite of mine. Seeing it now is to reveal all of its meticulously composed, brilliant layers. With <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>, watching it in full for the first time since, I think, 2002, I saw a more delicately composed, mystically invasive story than I’d seen previously. And with <em>Nashville</em> (hmm, maybe I saw it in 2001?), it’s like I was shown a different world, Robert Altman’s overlapping dialogue making me think that though he’s telling you 2 dozen stories at once, he’s just as interested in the ones even further on the fringe - the security guard talking in the corner, the person working at a sales counter waiting for a superstar to roll through.<br /><br />It’s like I fell in love with movies again. With songs, you hear them over and over again, get acquainted with each sigh, each turning of a phrase. A great movie is (duh) just as precisely filled with glorious moments, but I was afraid I’d dilute the impact of the full product by seeing it over and over again, and wound up with a shelf full of movies I never watched. That and they’re so much longer than songs. Yet watching each of these movies again this year made their impact more full because I was freed of the confines of expectations with the story, and I could marvel at the journey to get there. Could this be the beginning of me turning into someone who sees certain movies over and over again? I guess I wouldn’t mind so much.<br /><br /><strong>4. “A Woman A Man Walked By/The Crow Knows Where All The Children Go” <em>and</em> “April” PJ Harvey<br /></strong>For the most part the world has moved on from PJ Harvey by 2009, and perhaps that’s the way of how we talk about music. She released a collaboration with John Parrish this year, <em>A Woman A Man Walked By</em> and toured with him singing songs from that album and their previous collaboration, 1996’s Dance Hall At Louse Point. Dance Hall is a favorite of mine, wilder and looser and more demon-full than even Harvey’s harshest work. A Woman… is not as solid and has, I think, about a half album full of the first material of Harvey’s I’d ever truly call inessential.<br /><br />Yet two songs were Harvey at her mercurial best. “April,” which is like a late night torch song, sung in an old-woman-y rasp with a weird 20s funeral organ cranking behind her. Yet as the song reaches towards a solemn, wrenching climax, it shows Harvey still as a master of composition, creation, of concept spread into four minute songs. Likewise, the title track gets Harvey’s feisty, inscrutable wildness just right. Talk-singing over a blazing power-chording acoustic guitar, she sings of a “woman/man” with “chicken liver balls,” and cries out, “I want his fucking ass! I want your fucking ass!” It’s the defiant, fearless, goofy, aggressive Harvey I’ve loved for as long as I remember, coming through in all her glory.<br /><br /><strong>5. “Anti-Orgasm” </strong>and <strong>“Sacred Trickster” Sonic Youth<br /></strong>Reading an interview with Lee Ranaldo recently, he stated he thought <em>The Eternal</em> was the best Youth album of this decade, citing its creation as a more jam-based indie record (it was their first with an indie label in 20 years). I wish I could agree overall, much of it is not especially interesting. However, the Kim Gordon led songs are the best for her in over a decade, and the first two of the record are flat out astonishing. “Sacred Trickster” jangles with atonal guitars and propulsive surprise. Singing “What’s it like to be a girl in a band? I don’t quite understand!” Gordon sounds playful, surprised, rejuvenated and completely essential again. And “Anti-Orgasm” really is the jam-fueled indie song Ranaldo mistakes the whole album for – loud, ferocious, drums and guitar and voice exploding with snarky SY anger and mischievousness.<br /><br /><strong>6. The <em>Rolling Stone</em> Best of the 00s Albums List Issue<br /></strong>I’ve spent so much time thinking about what the 00’s were as a decade and compiling a Best of the Decade list for albums and movies. Yet it always struck me that we were foisting a personality that never quite fit onto this decade. Seeing the list Rolling Stone published this month really drove home what the decade was – which is to say, full of the great voices of decades past comingling with this decade’s. Radiohead’s 4 albums appeared on it, so did two from U2 and two from Bruce Springsteen and two from Bob Dylan. So did Fiona Apple’s <em>Extraordinary Machine</em> and PJ Harvey’s <em>Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea</em>. I felt like I didn’t have to pretend that everyone from the 90s made music this decade, and this list, with Radiohead’s <em>Kid A</em> claiming its top spot, didn’t exactly match mine. It did register smart, witty opinion on the ten years that preceded us. Other lists seem full of albums I’ve never heard of. What is a list if it’s that persnickety? Read this list and remember why you loved the music that truly existed in these last ten years.<br /><br /><strong>7. <em>Star Trek</em></strong><br />I grew up watching <em>Star Trek: The Next Generation</em>. My brothers and I would watch episodes, play with fake phasers, and discuss our favorite side characters over dinner. J.J. Abrams’s <em>Star Trek</em> – dare I say it, the best movie of the year – was the episode we always deserved, full of guts, effects, characters, drama, fascination, excitement, justice, and nobility. Abrams knew his reboot would have to be solid and exciting to restart the franchise in a time where everything (even <em>Melrose Place</em>!) seems to be rebooting. He did that and so much more.<br /><br /><strong>8. </strong><em>Yi Yi </em>(2000)<br />Somewhere deep in the nether regions of my Netflix cue was <em>Yi Yi,</em> a movie I only remembered because in 2000 it kept beating <em>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon</em> for Best Foreign Film honors in smaller film awards. Watching it, I hadn’t expected it to be the type of movie I’ve fallen so in love with lately – observational, taking in one interesting character’s experience after another, silently, as they go through more and more human scenarios. <em>Yi Yi</em> loves everyone in its world, deeply, even if they don’t love each other. Roger Ebert wrote this year or last about how when he cries in movies, it has to do with the kindness people show each other. I completely agree, and in <em>Yi Yi</em>, a wife who cries to her husband, a grandmother who strokes her granddaughter's hair, or a son speaking to his dead grandmother about how he loved her, these were the things that brought out wells of emotion I love experiencing for fictional characters. Because their experiences aren’t fictional at all.<br /><br /><strong>9. <em>Purple Rain </em></strong>(1984)<br />This September I saw a midnight showing of <em>Purple Rain</em>, and though it was just a normal showing of a movie and not quite a Rocky Horror event, audience members cheered at the musical numbers, and one superfan even knew the dance moves to all the Morris Day and the Time songs. What <em>Purple Rain</em> is, truly, is a fairly dumb story used to serve as context for extraordinary musical performances. That made Purple Rain the great evocation of Prince’s performance artist magnetism. How about in “Baby I’m A Star” when Prince catwalks up a small set of stairs to find a glowing guitar and shreds it shooting off priapic beams of light into the audience? Or when he humps the stage in “Darling Nikki”? Or stands with will-he-go-on solemnity before introduces “Purple Rain,” ya know, for that “real feeling” effect? Prince was a great showman at his prime here, and junky 80s story and bad acting or no, you can’t take your eyes off him when he performs.<br /><br /><strong>10. “Poker Face” </strong>and <strong>“Bad Romance” Lady Gaga<br /></strong>The year when all rules were out the window for pop hits. Watching Lady Gaga now, I’m convinced she’s at the forefront of a major pop movement, in which she can wear a corset, or date Kermit The Frog, or reference Hitchcock in a song, winning with her mystery over giant pop audiences and art-indie hipsters at once. This may be the next revolution (evolution?) of music – everything that comes before is suddenly accessible. And how did Gaga accomplish it? Through fun, pop hooks that explode and burn you without you ever minding. “Poker Face” is one of the great singles of modern times, I do not overstate this, and it bookended the year with “Bad Romance,” which indulged Gaga’s art-destruction outrage which must have been the most giant chorus ever created. Viva the future!</div></div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-81803789095485202009-12-01T16:00:00.000-08:002009-12-01T16:46:30.429-08:00The Best Film Performances of the Decade<div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9FFh6gekrqVL0xR66UDq5wVD4LTNYrXgYDp7FKIeOsdk_O0ORd8bPP33aBCW5Ga1lqNPouTC2NqseKrl4K8ZPu_DDgVq9dsYTjyMApVyld-_xVuske3933nxEOUDob31QZLrv/s1600/Charlize.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 240px; float: right; height: 320px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410425792412113298" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9FFh6gekrqVL0xR66UDq5wVD4LTNYrXgYDp7FKIeOsdk_O0ORd8bPP33aBCW5Ga1lqNPouTC2NqseKrl4K8ZPu_DDgVq9dsYTjyMApVyld-_xVuske3933nxEOUDob31QZLrv/s320/Charlize.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTHSFFsoaR51EIITImkqsPW_Nx5yI2O59cHJMUYcLXL4HgUroP6VcdYS7YHxPbnlvhWiEDnIDfdxkauC_hkP93CrjAS9xzgtDu1Zs7r-LX7gi7_7GCFWHo_XZOZ03YmDeHmRXC/s1600/heath.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 219px; float: right; height: 320px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410425784393089026" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTHSFFsoaR51EIITImkqsPW_Nx5yI2O59cHJMUYcLXL4HgUroP6VcdYS7YHxPbnlvhWiEDnIDfdxkauC_hkP93CrjAS9xzgtDu1Zs7r-LX7gi7_7GCFWHo_XZOZ03YmDeHmRXC/s320/heath.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XJqUOQlsqc-eWoGoDcTpNhyphenhyphenMS4vTYNjt5eSJh_eNCTG3tHONPdzx0c2qg9iZtvHVtU1GT5mYnUvWZkHzwL1VXs7T2LvIb54yBwowvX_iFJkl-AJAlAAquS9dPnk8Rpd105KD/s1600/christian.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 320px; float: right; height: 213px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410425804711862434" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XJqUOQlsqc-eWoGoDcTpNhyphenhyphenMS4vTYNjt5eSJh_eNCTG3tHONPdzx0c2qg9iZtvHVtU1GT5mYnUvWZkHzwL1VXs7T2LvIb54yBwowvX_iFJkl-AJAlAAquS9dPnk8Rpd105KD/s320/christian.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-svmWSsgNHWbnIAB2IhIw8BXAUSJyDJ4Zb1Tf1tBa5oka0wTMdcygcN4Qk1hHTnZb6qXtRqam9VCPSU-87tiCD8eHsiK1VetCuxW30s2jckKzsOlKu55AjIFx_NteIhxUYLeY/s1600/judi.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 249px; float: right; height: 320px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410425814918080354" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-svmWSsgNHWbnIAB2IhIw8BXAUSJyDJ4Zb1Tf1tBa5oka0wTMdcygcN4Qk1hHTnZb6qXtRqam9VCPSU-87tiCD8eHsiK1VetCuxW30s2jckKzsOlKu55AjIFx_NteIhxUYLeY/s320/judi.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYavdSsgybY8rHxofq47_PsQ0iW__ObKpVpTw38knj2JQkdR4Tcz74xnJdH9Qltod7mvFpGl8UYTNoc5rPO-a1UPIDVFDIxcn0ci-WsteJsVaw0EOBsV9gOem4jINQMgEJ9OBm/s1600/jamie-foxx-ray.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 320px; float: right; height: 240px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410425797871457570" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYavdSsgybY8rHxofq47_PsQ0iW__ObKpVpTw38knj2JQkdR4Tcz74xnJdH9Qltod7mvFpGl8UYTNoc5rPO-a1UPIDVFDIxcn0ci-WsteJsVaw0EOBsV9gOem4jINQMgEJ9OBm/s320/jamie-foxx-ray.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><em>The Onion’s AV Club</em> came out with a list today of the 20 Best Film Performances of the Decade (see it at http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best-film-performances-of-the-00s,35851/). It’s a fine list, although, I admit to have no fondness for their number 1, Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, and am shocked to not see my top 2 choices on their list. Still, the tenor of acting this decade has been so high, and so many movies were created simply to show off their star performance. With that in mind, I offer an alternative list, with only a few performances coinciding with theirs. Some of these won Oscars, some were nominated, and some, well, only I seemed to love them. I’m ok with that, as those performances absolutely go toe-to-toe with the more famous ones. At the top is the performance that perhaps sums up the capabilities of this decade’s movie ambitions – and the costs.<br /><br /><br /><strong>1. Heath Ledger <em>The Dark Knight </em></strong>(2008)<br />In our lifetimes I wonder if we’ll ever witness a performance this overwhelming, something that’s partly due to Ledger’s death. People, at the time of Ledger’s Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, argued that the Academy wouldn’t even recognize this type of movie had he not died before completing the film. I can’t possibly believe that (seriously, he would’ve won anyway), but in a way, it’s beside the point – Ledger did die, and that does color our perception of the performance, the full, demonic, invasive transformation of his Joker. You hear him sucking the wounds from his cheeks as though he’s feeding on the monstrosity of its presence. He seethes with anomie that takes over the stringiness of his hair, the sloppiness of his makeup, the rage of who he is. It goes beyond making a memorable “villain” and instead is like a generational embrace of nihilism and destruction – a force powerful enough to take the man playing the role. <em>The Dark Knight</em> concludes that humanity is a far more powerful adversary than the nihilism Ledger’s Joker, and you almost don’t even buy it. Here, he epitomizes evil like the great, dark monsters of cinema – from Bela Lugosi’s Dracula to Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. May I say with seriousness, this performance is better.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>2. Charlize Theron <em>Monster </em></strong>(2003)<br />Didn’t every actor and actress try and physically morph into a character of slumming ugliness in the hopes of getting an Oscar? Certainly many tried and even succeeded this decade. For Theron, that involved 30 pounds, a layer of fake leathery skin, and a vicious streak that inhabited serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Did she do it for the award? Maybe, maybe not, but either way, nobody went as far for a performance as Theron did (at least, until #1). It’s not simply the physical transformation into near unrecognizability, although, Theron’s voice, eyes, and physicality complete the makeup work. It’s the riveting magnetism of the performance that gives the character sympathy, meaning, humanity. Argue if you want that the movie wasn’t that great – it wasn’t, but really all that does is emphasize the grand transformation at its center, a full showcase of a personality so powerful it can’t even fit into a scripted film.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>3. Naomi Watts <em>Mulholland Dr. </em></strong>(2001)<br />This is something you never see anymore – a daring part starring a no name actress that is both fearless and commanding, a part that turns its indie starlet into a true Hollywood star. Watts has to be varied in <em>Mulholland Drive</em>, just by the nature of her dual character – David Lynch didn’t make an easy task for her. Yet what gives the movie power is the way in which its labyrinthine final act of the movie is so rife with sympathy and ugliness. This is a woman that captivated us with her pure, sweet, gorgeous star innocence (her name was Betty, for crying out loud!). The unique, Lynchian moment in which a soap audition turns into a scene of carnal desire shows Watts in her full, indescribable range – pure, all right, but pure, adrenalized emotion.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>4. Catalina Sandina Moreno <em>Maria Full of Grace </em></strong>(2004)<br />Indie movies were perhaps more proscripted this decade, and even more beholden to having conclusive, positive endings. <em>Maria Full of Grace</em> is like that, but also more unvarnished and wise. Casting Moreno, who was unknown prior (and, really, afterwards), was key in the film’s wounding, humane power. She glows and wants, fears and does not know what she’s gotten herself into. In fact, she typifies what has become a trend that’s a powerful antidote to the all-star slumming of non-indie pictures – the unknowns that, through the truth of their embodiments of their characters, show us life on screen (see also Gabourey Sidibe in this year’s <em>Precious</em>).<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>5. Jamie Foxx <em>Ray </em></strong>(2004)<br />So many actors found movie vehicles for their perfect impersonations of famous people, it became a little boring. <em>Ray</em> is a lumpy, occasionally formulaic biopic, but there’s no missing what Jamie Foxx accomplishes as Ray Charles (and if you did miss the movie, he brought it to you everywhere else, including Kanye West’s #1 hit “Gold Digger”). You can argue where <em>Ray</em> works is in showing you the demons that made Charles impossible to deal with and a desperate drug addict were the same that made him great. What that really means is that the precision of Foxx’s work makes you believe in the overwhelming size of his drives and abilities. Foxx is scaldingly, charismatically spot on here.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>6. Ellen Burstyn <em>Requiem For A Dream </em></strong>(2000)<br />In one unforgettable story from Director of Photography Matthew Libatique on <em>Requiem For a Dream</em>, Libatique discussed filming Ellen Burstyn’s famous monologue about what it means to get old. The camera drifted a bit, and director Darren Aronofsky confronted him on it. Libatique’s lens had become too fogged up to see – he was crying too hard. That was the take Aronofsky used. Burstyn’s work was beyond fearless – ugly and terrifying in spurts, her portrait of a deluded drug addict makes the movie’s upsetting, kick-in-the-pants story its true heart.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>7. Phillip Seymour Hoffman <em>Capote </em></strong>(2005)<br />Hoffman seemed everywhere in film this decade, but his work as Truman Capote is the most unforgettable. Hoffman invaded the persona – the voice, the invective, the gestures, the demons, the physical fanciness as well as the control and manipulation of his words. In <em>Capote</em>, Capote’s gifts are also his downfall – his obsession and vanity get tangled with his sympathy, his morality, his talents. As a portrait of the twisted depths that drive artistry, <em>Capote </em>works because Hoffman so specifically inhabits all that drives Capote.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>8. Meryl Streep <em>Doubt </em></strong>(2008)<br />She got four Oscar nominations in the 90’s and 6 in the 80’s, but I’ll take each of her three (and, I can say with reasonably certainty that this year will make four) Oscar nominated performances this decade as a mark of the true power of Streep’s abilities. <em>Adaptation, The Devil Wears Prada</em>, and this year’s <em>Julie and Julia </em>show a Streep so comfortably ferocious and relatable, she was an entirely new imposing figure. <em>Doubt </em>is the finest of her work here, as a terrifyingly serious, focused nun convinced of a horrible wrongdoing. She was matched up with Phillip Seymour Hoffman in an intense mental showdown, but he can’t stand a chance – Streep’s singular certainty and last minute collapse is the height of masterful, invasive acting.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>9. Christian Bale <em>The New World </em></strong>(2005)<br />Call it my personal favorite. Terrence Mallick’s occasionally-painfully-slow, methodically gorgeous take on the Pocahontas story seemed to many like an art school joke. I’m convinced it was more, a deeply beautiful meditation on civilization’s reining in of the wild spirit. Bale’s eyes are unforgettable – as John Rolfe, the man who loved Pocahontas and brought her to civilized celebrity, he takes over the movie from Colin Farrell only to take it to a more deeply felt, more genuine place. He later became so severe an action hero, it’s easy to forget that so much of Bale’s range comes from his warmth, his certainty about humanity. Here, you saw the gentle version of that same instinct.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>10. Daniel Day Lewis <em>Gangs of New York </em></strong>(2002)<br />His performance in <em>There Will Be Blood </em>may be more iconic, but I’m convinced Paul Thomas Anderson wouldn’t have even known Daniel Day Lewis’s bloody, terrifying abilities before <em>Gangs of New York</em>. Scorcese missed the ball on this movie – I don’t even think he knew what he was making – but Lewis’s maniacal ruthlessness is such a potent force on screen, it enlivens and justifies the mess around him.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>11. Zhang Ziyi <em>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon </em></strong>(2000)<br />She played on the persona so many times afterwards (even making it into <em>Rush Hour 2</em>!), Ziyi nearly killed all the goodwill she built from <em>Crouching Tiger</em>. Her performance, however, is the movie, despite its set-piece, high-wire flying fight scenes. The truth is the core of the movie is her impetuousness, her youthful insatiability, and her desire for freedom. Ziyi is magnetizing and unnerving at once, a warrior and a little girl fighting for recognition.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>12. Billy Bob Thornton <em>The Man Who Wasn’t There </em></strong>(2001)<br />Thornton’s best and last great performance came from nothing but staring with deep, wounded eyes. The Coen Brother’s existential noir brimmed with beautiful black and white cinematography, but it was matched by Thornton’s haunted vacuousness, a performance of seeming passivity that helps keep a movie about an absence of personality from ever seeming empty.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>13. Eddie Murphy <em>Dreamgirls </em></strong>(2006)<br />When performing on <em>SNL </em>in the 80’s, you knew Murphy could inhabit James Brown, but perhaps you missed the pain and viciousness of his eyes. In <em>Dreamgirls</em>, Murphy, more than his starlet costars, inhabits fame’s dark side, and coming from work as recognizable as his James Brown impersonation, you feel like you know the source of his infamous staged energy.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>14. Cate Blanchet <em>I’m Not There</em> (2007)<br /></strong>If you need proof of Blanchet’s versatility, may you find it in 2007 when her performance as Bob Dylan in <em>I’m Not There </em>earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the same time as <em>Elizabeth: The Golden Age </em>earned her a nomination for Best actress – for playing Queen Elizabeth. Squint and you’ll have trouble telling her apart from the real Dylan, all scrawny limbs and severe cheekbones. Even when you can tell the stunt impersonation for the glorious sleight of hand it is, her work as a driven artist frayed by his own idealism is mesmerizing in its own right.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>15. Cameron Diaz <em>Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her </em></strong>(2000)<br />Rodrigo Garcia’s <em>Things You Can Tell…</em> (2000) and <em>Nine Lives </em>(2005) each tell short, intricately delineated stories of women interconnected by their lives and feelings, and each overflows with miraculous performances. <em>Things…</em> sticks with me, though, above all else due to Diaz’s sweet, astonishingly beautiful performance as a lonely blind woman in a dead-end love affair. Say what you will about Diaz as a star, Diaz is an actress of true feeling and range. Here, her character may not even know how beautiful she is, and has nothing to hide her own isolation and disappointment behind. She delivers an astonishingly lovely speech at the end of the film asking "What is the life of a woman anyway?" It answers its own question.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>16. Judi Dench <em>Notes From a Scandal </em></strong>(2006)<br />Dench had long been accepted as a perennial, majestic, presence of acting royalty. Yet her work in <em>Notes From a Scandal</em> turned her severity both inward and outward at once. As a teacher who discovers an affair between another teacher (Cate Blanchet) and student, Dench is harsh and furious, but also lonely, isolated, and turned on by the power it provides. The movie is luridly soapy, but Dench’s work also makes it deeply felt.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>17. Jack Nicholson <em>About Schmidt </em></strong>(2002)<br />For Nicholson, the notion of being this free of vanity seemed highly impossible. Indeed, as Schmidt, Nicholson is frumpy, sad, angry, lonely, and imperfectly blanketed in the world’s worst combover. Alexander Payne’s dramedies climaxed with Oscar recognition in 2004’s<em> Sideways</em>, but <em>Schmidt</em> was closer to who he was – a deep, unclear pool of conflicting emotions embodied in Nicholson’s entire physical presence.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>18. Mickey Rourke <em>The Wrestler </em></strong>(2008)<br />So many dramas this decade reveled in the hard, unvarnished truth of their characters. Darren Aronofsky knew where these performances came from (see #6), and in Mickey Rourke, he found an actor willing to plum the depths of his “used up piece of meat” living long past his expiration date. One look at the famous scene on an abandoned boardwalk in which Rourke tells Evan Rachel Wood that he only wants her not to hate him, and you, with full sympathy, believe.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>19. Daniel Craig <em>Casino Royale </em></strong>(2006)<br />Action movies became so serious this decade, and it was a bit of the trifecta of Matt Damon, Christian Bale, and Daniel Craig that helped complete the shift. Craig, for my money, came in by radically reshaping Jamed Bond into a short-fused paragon of seriousness. Many balked that Craig was an enemy to the fun of Bond (particularly in 2008’s awful <em>Quantum of Solace</em>), but he’s beyond magnetic on screen.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><strong>20. Nicole Kidman <em>The Others </em></strong>(2001)<br />New Nicole Kidman performances have fallen into a sort of disfavor, but 2001 seemed to be the height of her career – an Oscar nomination for <em>Moulin Rouge</em> was inevitable, and all the while, critics and audiences alike lamented that Kidman couldn’t be nominated also for <em>The Others</em>. <em>The Others</em> was a horror film in the vein of <em>The Sixth Sense</em>, in that its ending was all shock, but it builds on the rich, smoky textures of Kidman’s performance as a mother equally unable to keep ghosts from her children as she is unable to keep the world from getting to them first.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Honorable Mentions: </span>Maggie Gyllenhaal <span style="font-style: italic;">Sherrybaby, </span>Vera Formiga <span style="font-style: italic;">Down to the Bone</span>, Christoph Waltz <span style="font-style: italic;">Inglourious Basterds</span>,<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Molly Shannon <span style="font-style: italic;">Year of the Dog</span><span style="font-style: italic;">, </span>Terance Howard <span style="font-style: italic;">Hustle & Flow, </span><span>Johnny Depp <span style="font-style: italic;">Pirates of the Carribean, </span>Tim Robbins <span style="font-style: italic;">Mystic River</span></span><br /></div></div></div></div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-82836100771004170352009-11-16T10:40:00.000-08:002010-02-22T16:07:35.458-08:00The Greats: The Sweet Hereafter<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4QS0e3pY0EHAwwx2UqcLcmHriCqE0M8g_7ENa3O1mCYSJoIXFtqWPgcGyHZnD_Zmrw9bSwUv-GpBTNDWm1EgPzsVswTGJClDhtX5ZAoVVDXrQc-G349TH38TgcMySbiASerbs/s1600/Sweet+Hereafter.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 210px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404789494227655730" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4QS0e3pY0EHAwwx2UqcLcmHriCqE0M8g_7ENa3O1mCYSJoIXFtqWPgcGyHZnD_Zmrw9bSwUv-GpBTNDWm1EgPzsVswTGJClDhtX5ZAoVVDXrQc-G349TH38TgcMySbiASerbs/s320/Sweet+Hereafter.jpg" /></a><br /><div>I couldn't quite find the essay I would like to read about <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>, Atom Egoyan's 1997 masterpiece about a small mountain town torn apart by a school bus acccident, so I figured I'd write what I thought myself. Roger Ebert last week wrote a beautiful piece about how he now feels, 15 years after its release, that <em>Hoop Dreams</em> was the great American documentary. Well, rewatching <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>, I'm more certain than ever it was the greatest of a certain type of movie the 90's perfected: the indie drama. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>I don't quite know the best way to describe this genre, but in a way it's the movie I came of age watching. As a teenager in the 90's, I ate up film reviews, Top 10 lists, critical essays, TV shows. Each year, it seemed a new "understated" drama had upped the ante on quality and verismilitude, that each one was more genuine and true to the bone than the last. This climaxed in a way in 1996, the year in which four indie movies - <em>Shine, Fargo, The English Patient,</em> and <em>Secrets and Lies</em> - competed for best picture. It climaxed in another way in 1995, the seminal year of indie movie-making when <em>Dead Man Walking, Leaving Las Vegas, The Usual Suspects, </em>and <em>The City of Lost Children </em>were released. And in another way, it climaxed in 1999, the year of breakout creativity in the indie world that led to <em>Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, All About My Mother</em>, and <em>American Beauty</em> winning the Oscar for Best Picture.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>But in my estimation, that was on the downslope of the true revolution, and the true revolution climaxed in 1997, one of the great, indominable years for movie making. Some of the movies that year aren't as notorious as those others, but they are, in many cases, better: <em>Boogie Nights, LA Confidential, The Wings of the Dove, Waiting for Guffman, In The Company of Men, Afterglow, Deconstructing Harry, Chasing Amy, The Apostle, The House of Yes, Ulee's Gold, The Ice Storm, </em>and towering over all of them in quality was <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>. Well, almost all of them. In all honesty, I must except <em>Boogie Nights</em> - I think there were, truly, four perfect movies of the 90's - movies just perfect, each second, from beginning to end: <em>Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, Boogie Nights</em>, and <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>. I said <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em> was the best movie of the year at the time, but who's to wrangle with perfection? (Plus, I was 15 at the time, what did my opinion matter?)</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><em>The Sweet Hereafter</em> is the type of movie that transfixes you with emotion and grips your core. It's told wildly out of order, but then, it's in the exact right order, the central school bus accident occurring just over an hour into the movie, long after you know it's going to happen - until it, truly, has become part of the cold, sunny landscape. It is eventually as present as the clouds or the mountains of the scenic town. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>The movie "begins" somewhere in the middle, with Ian Holm's sturdy Mitchell Stephens' car being stuck in a town's car wash, just after receiving a call from Zoey, his drug addict daughter. She attempts to reminisce with him, but he wonders if she's simply doing so in an attempt to ask for more money. We're certain this has happened before. This moment is telling for the movie - the town has malfunctioned, given up the appearance of functioning and abandoned its day to day duties. Stephens opens his door and runs out of the car into the car wash - he too, dealing with his child who is not dead but is just as lost, cannot escape the downpour of grief in the town. He shows up at the Bide-a-Wile motel, where two of the grief-stricken parents attempt to run their business, but in their and the motel's disarray, it's treated about as half-assed as the carwash is.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>It then picks up a dual thread of Stephens later, 2 years later, on a plane coincidentally sitting next to Zoey's childhood friend, and before the accident, where the town is a different, functional place. There's Dolores, the kindly bus driver, who in the "present" wears a neck brace and speaks with giant spaces between her words, and sits in front of a wall of all the children of the accident, framed. There's Nicole, the 16-year-old with a budding singing career who is secretly having an affair with her father, Sam. And there's Billy, whose children Nicole babysits, who is having an affair with Risa, who runs the motel, seen "earlier" in happier times.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Watching <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>, I'm struck by how spellbinding the grief that binds the movie is, the extraordinary sense of detail it takes to make the "present" distinct from the "past" - one look at a character's face, and you know what part of the timeline you're seeing. Yet there's an additional piece. In a famous scene from the movie, around 40 minutes in, Nicole - in the "past" - is babysitting Billy's children, Mason and Jessica. She reads the Robert Browning poem "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." "When, lo, as they reached the mountainside/ a wonderful portal opened wide/ As if a cavern suddenly hollowed/ And the piper advanced and the children followed."</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Mason asks about the meaning of the story. Why did the Piper want to take all the children from the town of Hamelin? Was he mad that the town didn't pay him? Was he just mean? They discuss this, and Nicole says she guesses he wasn't mean, simply, very angry. Nicole is a victim herself, of course, of incest with her father, shown to us in one scene (ostensibly taking place later in the same night) where her father seduces her by candlelight. This scene is disturbing because it's sort of romantic - the first time you see the movie, you think back making sure you were right that this man is her father. Later, she comes home from the hospital, paralyzed - a reference to the lame child of "The Pied Piper" who misses all the children, who finds it "Dull in the town since the children left/ I must admit that I'm bereft/ of all the wonderful sights they see/ that the Piper also promised me." She sabotages the lawsuit that Stephens is trying to mount by lying in a deposition while her father, sitting nearby, can't say anything. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>As played by Sarah Polley, Nicole is the true center of <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>. The final scene is one I remembered, vividly, no matter what part of my memory of <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em> wandered away. In it, it is again the night of her reading "The Pied Piper" to Mason and Jessica. Each has fallen asleep, and she closes the book and kisses each one of them on the forehead. We know, from earlier in the movie, she then changes her clothes into something more provocative, talks briefly with Billy, who gives her his dead wife's clothing, then goes on a "date" with her father. Yet here, we see something different. She leaves the childrens' bedroom and walks to the window. She stands, and then the window, covered by curtains, is filled with light. The movie ends.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>For years, I thought to myself, what does it mean? I assumed Billy's car had pulled up. Perhaps this was foreshadowing? A flashback to a simpler, more peaceful moment? </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>But that's not how the lights come up, really - I'm imposing an earthly explanation. The lights are not shown from left to right or right to left, the window lights up at once just as Nicole stands in front of it. The scene is filled with Mychael Danna's moving medieval-sounding flute score, just as the movie is filled with Polley herself singing on the soundtrack. I think of this scene, now, as nothing less than Nicole commanding the gods to cause this accident. She is not mean, just very, very angry. She is the piper leading the children by flute and her music to the portal in the mountainside, preserving for them the perfect love their parents have, and yet making the town suffer for her victimization. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>This is an extraordinary conclusion to an extraordinary movie. Twelve years later, it's clear this was the epicenter of the career of everyone involved. For Polley, she received so much extraordinary press for the performance, and was discussed as a longshot for an Oscar nomination. Yet perhaps everyone knew she wouldn't get one. For one, it was a competitive year - Kim Basinger won for <em>LA Confidential</em>, which wasn't such a travesty, even though she beat Julianne Moore in <em>Boogie Nights</em> (truly her signature role). Also not nomiated that year were Christina Ricci and Sigourney Weaver in <em>The Ice Storm, </em>Heather Graham for <em>Boogie Nights</em>, Stacy Edwards in <em>In The Company of Men,</em> Debi Morgan in <em>Eve's Bayou</em>, Miranda Richardson in <em>The Apostle,</em> and Catherine O'Hara in <em>Waiting for Guffman, </em>so at least she's in good company. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Additionally, though, everyone knew she wouldn't get a nomination based on the nature of the performance. Her rage is so internal and never expressed. In fact, the fascination of Nicole is how the rage could be there at all, under such a placid stare. Still, you see it, you <em>feel</em> it. In her extraordinary scene at the deposition, Nicole lies, but so sincerely - she elicits tears even as she is emitting lightning bolts of ferocity, spinning a concoction out of mid-air.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Polley was working a lot right after the movie, she was the "it" girl for a moment because of <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>. She starred in <em>Go</em>, but then sort of wandered away from the limelight, which is perhaps a reason she was so right to play Nicole. She got an Oscar nomination a couple years ago after all - for writing the Alice Munro adaptation of <em>Away From Her</em>, and in a way, I saw Nicole in that script, too, wandering about that movie's intersection of anger and grief.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>As for Egoyan, he was a favorite filmmaker of mine in the 90's. He was always leading up to <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>, it seems - after kinky, fragmented works like <em>The Adjustor</em>, he just got better and better in quality. A low-grade, video-shot indie called <em>Calendar</em> still seems the work of a daring auteur. Then, in 1995, his <em>Exotica</em> already seemed a plenty formidable tentpole in 90's indie filmmaking. Afterwards, he never quite found his feet again - <em>Felicia's Journey</em>, released two years later, was a half-salacious ramble, and his attempted epic of the Armenian genocide, 2002's <em>Ararat</em>, was a splattery fragmented mess. In effect, <em>Calendar</em> - the story of a couple attempting to location-scout for a documentary about the Armenian genocide as their relationship crumbles - was really all he had to say about the genocide, and it wasn't even about the genocide. It was about a filmmaker who cannot stop what he sees happening.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Egoyan chronicled that sensation best with <em>The Sweet Hereafter</em>, which wanders through a feeling. He drenches you in it, like Mitchell running through his carwash, and finally sees it released by the light at the window. A movie like it had never been made before and has never been made since. </div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-36521095751345920082009-10-01T21:19:00.001-07:002009-10-02T16:59:40.056-07:00Top 20 Best Albums of the 00's<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJMcwSBeZO1powAqt6lgXu9b7hsaslyqr7a80YIk7xCam3jgUOPPpTDLH-o50xA4UrB1SSvwFEZ0wKC4ZS969zD5aC3Es0kfSde1FMyV4UV-tOGIFvm_esYWGzP3BguBPtq6H7/s1600-h/Sleater-Kinney_The_Woods.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJMcwSBeZO1powAqt6lgXu9b7hsaslyqr7a80YIk7xCam3jgUOPPpTDLH-o50xA4UrB1SSvwFEZ0wKC4ZS969zD5aC3Es0kfSde1FMyV4UV-tOGIFvm_esYWGzP3BguBPtq6H7/s320/Sleater-Kinney_The_Woods.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387864992313171922" border="0" /></a>
<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSe2yX-D4shEnxwBiS6LvlzDGmSY6gRl67JY-o7tPGFCJv15h5YGxSPBPNJFujo2LJuh7yjZ4K4rQ25OphKLWnw8J9w_lIrOB-w2im46oXcYTsMTjV8VFQI2pPEze9J0vvnrr/s1600-h/Seachange.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 297px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSe2yX-D4shEnxwBiS6LvlzDGmSY6gRl67JY-o7tPGFCJv15h5YGxSPBPNJFujo2LJuh7yjZ4K4rQ25OphKLWnw8J9w_lIrOB-w2im46oXcYTsMTjV8VFQI2pPEze9J0vvnrr/s320/Seachange.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387864986168202946" border="0" /></a>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpqmXPQXyEm1fSyQa73k0YdF9pYWw1gfLCk9RcWzJe148KPqG6wZ-Tw7I-9auxqVZ5U7F8D9_-lkuELzYcGad2YKAPNNb9WTee3MmqK1ZLmN-eJcgyYb8MJxyTW-VQN2Gob1U-/s1600-h/dangelo-voodoo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpqmXPQXyEm1fSyQa73k0YdF9pYWw1gfLCk9RcWzJe148KPqG6wZ-Tw7I-9auxqVZ5U7F8D9_-lkuELzYcGad2YKAPNNb9WTee3MmqK1ZLmN-eJcgyYb8MJxyTW-VQN2Gob1U-/s320/dangelo-voodoo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387864970401662610" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifsyoz_pJwHKkqCR_ioO9ZngpSxRxATGJFxgKe5PyRMS-V5bQSrSMePioAnNYtFdpaoUnK8B3JtbzvW9xUyAI1l-y5Xu73ShBOZFh7syCfP9T7NAc9Alhhot1WeUXG-KDRXRMz/s1600-h/Green_Day-American_Idiot-Frontal.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifsyoz_pJwHKkqCR_ioO9ZngpSxRxATGJFxgKe5PyRMS-V5bQSrSMePioAnNYtFdpaoUnK8B3JtbzvW9xUyAI1l-y5Xu73ShBOZFh7syCfP9T7NAc9Alhhot1WeUXG-KDRXRMz/s320/Green_Day-American_Idiot-Frontal.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387864961200594338" border="0" /></a>
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<br />I've come to accept that for this decade, a Best Albums list is a dead enterprise. Not only is it full of the great artist of the 90's, it feels like a holdover of concepts developed in the 90's. I could and will go a step further: it feels like a holdover of concepts developed in the 20th century.
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<br />Without an "Alternative" to take over, a ska or an electronica to point to definite trends, an Alanis Morissette and Courtney Love to "challenge the notions of women in rock." Without a punk or a hair metal or a disco or a new wave or a British invasion in this decade, we can look back at the last 10 years of music and say, conclusively: What happened? It wouldn't quite be right to say not much, but it certainly requires a different framework. Suddenly I've become an old man reminiscing about the old days at age 27.
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<br />Technology happened. First in mp3's promulgated, then Napster, then iPod. More simply than that, the computer happened. Everywhere. We all had one, and we all began to play our music on it. We didn't hold albums and records, and we rarely played them all the way through. This is what I mean - I'm admittedly attached to the concept of the album, and my #1 album of the decade is like an album's last stand - a brilliant fly in the face of the pallbearers of the Album's coffin.
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<br />That album - Green Day's <span style="font-style: italic;">American Idiot<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span><span>is also fantastic. I won't divorce my personal taste from this list, but it's worth noting this album isn't entirely a reflection of my tastes. For one, one very deserving album is not on it, the album I once listed as the best album of 2003 and an album I've written extensively about: Lucinda Williams' </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">World Without Tears<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span>I think of it as an all time great. I also think there's no room for it here.</span></span></span></span>
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<br />For other artists who were "90's" artists like Lucinda, I had to be careful. PJ Harvey's <span style="font-style: italic;">Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span><span>is as great as an album in the top 10, but I already had two albums released in 2000 by artists who were integral to music in the 90's. To say nothing of the fact that Harvey's two subsequent records </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">- <span style="font-style: italic;">Uh Huh Her<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span>and </span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">White Chalk<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span><span>probably could have been on this list somewhere.</span></span></span></span></span></span>
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<br />But they're not, neither is Sleater-Kinney's <span style="font-style: italic;">One Beat<span style="font-style: italic;">, </span></span><span><span>Aimee Mann's</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Lost In Space<span style="font-style: italic;">, </span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span>Liz Phair's </span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Liz Phair<span style="font-style: italic;">, or </span></span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Fiona Apple's </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Extraordinary Machine<span style="font-style: italic;">, </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>though I loved them all. Their great times are behind them, I suppose.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>
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<br />Somehow I also talked myself out of including Eminem's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Marshall Mathers LP - </span><span><span>it too was released in 2000 and not especially relevant. I can't quite say why, but it didn't seem right on this list. Neither did The White Stripes <span style="font-style: italic;">Elephant</span> or The Killers' <span style="font-style: italic;">Hot Fuss</span>, though they may feel right to other list writers.
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<br />This list feels right about what we went through in this decade, and it had some great music. Let us sit back and appreciate what we had, even if it feels, sometimes, that this decade had the long shadow of its previous, parent century restricting any of its freedom. This list is dominated by 90's artists who got angrier, rowdier, older, and wiser - and is, indeed, topped by one who did all of those things, gloriously.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The 20 Best Albums of the 2000's</span>
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mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="">1.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-weight: bold;">Green Day </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">American Idiot </i><span style="font-weight: bold;">(2004)</span>
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> For a minute, the rage in 2004 reached the fury, electricity, and relevance of our great musical past. This is the album that out-sold their 90's standard bearer <span style="font-style: italic;">Dookie</span>, dared to add conceptual weight and operatic tendencies to their approach, and for all purposes, <span style="font-style: italic;">worked</span>. Even when songs like "Extraordinary Girl" lost you in their attempt at story and consistency, the consciousness of the record elevated everything around it. "Holiday" sounded like profound rebellion and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" took anxiety into the 00's pop pantheon like no other single did, becoming a ubiquitous anthem of the down and out.
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> That can be said of the record, too, whose true subject is the ultimate failure of rebellion, the hopelessness of those who "beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies." Not only was it the true record of the dawning of the rest of our lives, it had the bravery to see the clouds in the dawn.
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><i style="">
<br /></i></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="">2.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-weight: bold;">D’Angelo </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Voodoo </i><span style="font-weight: bold;">(2000)</span>
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<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> It seems strange to reward an album released merely three weeks into the decade, but here it sits, a brilliant, unforgettable anachronism - a sonically explosive r/b record built on musicianship, endless jams, soul grooves, and the audacity of an artist. D'Angelo used his liner notes to decry the state of modern r/b, so he took it back a couple of decades. "Playa Playa" overwhelms with horns and harmonies, "Devil's Pie" adds a turntable, and "Left & Right" brings in Method Man and Redman - it moves as far forward as it plunges backwards. Its climax too, the breathlessly naked (like its video) "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" is the ultimate soul catharsis - a building of music and ideas expressed in beautiful confession.
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<br /></i></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="">3.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-weight: bold;">TV On The Radio </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Dear Science</i><span style="font-weight: bold;"> (2008)</span>
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<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> TV On The Radio managed to incorporate everything, yelling, "Hey Jacko, fuck your war" in one breath while intoning poems to the dead over synth and guitar noise in "Halfway Home" with the other. 2008 seemed to me, in a way, as the best year of the 80's - when we embraced our synth and performer greatness and lost the hairgel and spandex. TV On The Radio is the document of how much we've learned - appropriating guitar and keyboards where we need them, hip hop if it fits - but only to serve the poetry, the goal of the record. Science and <span style="font-style: italic;">Science</span> intone and demand answers, yet look to the future, seeing the "Golden Age" coming round. The record ends with a ballin' masterpiece, "Lover's Day" that is sexually explicit alright, but it's also so sweet about what it is - a simple declaration of "I'm gonna take you home."
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<br /></i></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="">4.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-weight: bold;">Beck </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Sea Change </i><span style="font-weight: bold;">(2002)</span>
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<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> I get into trouble for telling people my true feelings of Beck - that I found <span style="font-style: italic;">Odelay</span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnite Vultures</span> empty, ultra hipster excuses to start dancing and not feel bad about it. I think Beck's run in the 00's outdid his work of the 90's, by so much, and it's because he gets released in <span style="font-style: italic;">Sea Change</span> to explode with meaning, with sadness, with the realization that "These days, I barely get by." It was a smash - it turned Beck from a weirdo with a two turntables to an artist of range and feeling. It turned the line "I'm tired of fighting for a lost cause" into a radio friendly refrain, even as it made you long for a drink. <span style="font-style: italic;">Sea Change</span> was perhaps incorrectly labeled our modern-times version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Blood On The Tracks</span>, but there's no denying that if this decade need a document to express how people truly, deeply <span style="font-style: italic;">felt</span>, they could begin with the acoustic strumming that opens "The Golden Age," and end with the guitar that learns to "let it pass by the side of the road."
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<br /></i></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="">5.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-weight: bold;">Radiohead </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Kid A</i><span style="font-weight: bold;"> (2000)</span>
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<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> In a way, <span style="font-style: italic;">Kid A</span> defines Radiohead more than even <span style="font-style: italic;">OK Computer </span>did. This was the record, in 2000, was the album that turned the band into the chroniclers of digital technology's fearful, occasionally bankrupt ascendancy. It put conceptual weight into the notion of words and ideas that betray us. "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon," Thom Yorke sings on the album's opening, "Everything In Its Right Place," a song of such sinisterness you truly believe nothing to be in its right place. His aftertaste was ours - sour, ferociously angry, saddened, silenced. The paranoia would define a second significant Radiohead and Yorke decade, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Kid A</span> would remain unequaled in their work.
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<br /></i></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="">6.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-weight: bold;">Kanye West </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">The College Dropout </i><span style="font-weight: bold;">(2004)</span>
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<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> The truly great, occasionally forgotten accomplishment of Kanye West is that he actually managed to sneak humanity back into rap - especially in a decade of so much posturing and look-how-every-chick-in-the-club-wants-me bravado. There is one song of that bravado on <span style="font-style: italic;">The College Dropout</span>, and it actually doesn't say that every girl wants West, it says every girl likes to groove out to Anita Baker. "All Falls Down," the song that truly showed West's pop capabilities, is a song about the way images and self-consciousness are crippling, humanizing feelings. In a flow as smooth and inviting as West's, it felt like a true, welcome, even brave breakthrough.
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<br /></i></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in; font-weight: bold;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">7.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->DJ Danger Mouse <i style="">The Grey Album </i>(2003)</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> The moment technology really began to change music - Danger Mouse's still-not-quite-legally-released triumph is to take two albums and make them better. I mean that. I mean that because it bridged music in a way we didn't know we could do. It acknowledged everything we could do had already been done, so we had to work with what was there. And it made us realize our idols weren't that far apart - creating a digital idol all his own.
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<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in; font-weight: bold;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">8.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Neko Case <i style="">Fox Confessor Brings The Flood</i> (2006)</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> It makes sense that in a decade of reappropriation, its greatest, most "artistic" new voice would come from one singing in a manner that made her sound like Patsy Cline - a throwback to the wild, soothing women of country's past. Yet <span style="font-style: italic;">Fox Confessor</span> is an album of modern anxiety, a magnificently full treatise on the notion that speaking the truth takes all of you and can leave you vanquished, forced to speak. She sings of the "Star Witness" who sings when she runs, the widows of St. Angel reveling in their husbands' ashes, murder victims, and even John the Baptist saying what must have seemed - to him - the Truth. Yet by locking her ideas so deeply inside her inscrutable, luscious productions, she created a fascination that was entirely, wonderfully new.
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<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in; font-weight: bold;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">9.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Sleater-Kinney <i style="">The Woods </i>(2005)</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> Had it not been Sleater-Kinney's curtain call, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Woods</span> would have been the album that turned Sleater-Kinney into psychadelic legends - or at least, to the extent these indie 90's holdovers could be. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Woods</span> finds fury in a manner the already furious post-punkers didn't think they could grasp - not to the Punk recent past, but to the classic rock of decades ago, trading on Keith Moon drums, Hendrix guitar riffs, and pure protest anger. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein sang of ripping themselves open, and they do, on track after track, scream with more command and excitement than they'd ever done before. "The Fox" is so loud and virulent, that by the time they lead you wondering about political bs'ing in "Wilderness," you know longer recognize this band you loved. By the time "What's Mine Is Yours" adds some sex into the mix, you like whose shown up even better.
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<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="">10. Blackalicious <span style="font-style: italic;">Blazing Arrow</span> </span></span><span><span style="">(2002)</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Ten years after A Tribe Called Quest and Pharcyde, Blackalicious mastered the alternative hip hop creation. <span style="font-style: italic;">Blazing Arrow</span> was and has been unsurpassed as the smoker's rap/soul record for the spoken word and poetry slam crowd, and might have been just as irrelevant and underground if it hadn't been so fun, so wild, and, most importantly, so vast and unrelenting. Blackalicious, and its loquacious, un-stutterable leader Gift of Gab spew forth rhymes at a pace that seems beyond comprehension, but find it evoking positivity (as in the Gil Scott Heron guesting "First in Flight") just as easily as it decries urban decay ("Sky Is Falling"), or wanders into stoner-rock with "Brain Washers," spoken word with "Release, pts. 1, 2, and 3", or experimental music with "Chemical Calisthenics." The album is 75 minutes of pure hip hop heaven, casting a light on the possibilities of rappers, poets, thinkers , and dancers alike who want to cram all they can into one, bold, encompassing statement. By the time the final, gorgeous soul number "Day One" promises to "get your soul back," you think it may in fact have done just that.
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<br /><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">11.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Girl Talk <i style="">Feed The Animals</i> (2008)<i style="">
<br /></i></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">12.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->PJ Harvey <i style="">Stories From The City, Stories From the Sea </i>(2000)
<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">13.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Outkast <i style="">Speakerboxx/The Love Below </i>(2003)
<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in; font-weight: bold;">
<br /><!--[if !supportLists]--></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">14. Bob Dylan <span style="font-style: italic;">Love and Theft</span> (2001) </span>
<br /><span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">15.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Jay-Z <i style="">The Black Album </i>(2002)
<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">16.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Wilco <i style="">Yankee Hotel Foxtrot </i>(2001)
<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">17.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Madonna <i style="">Music </i>(2000)
<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">18.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The Dixie Chicks<i style=""> The Long Way Around </i>(2006)
<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">19.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->LCD Soundsystem <i style="">Sound of Silver </i>(2007)
<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=""><span style="">20.<span style=";font-family:";font-size:7;" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Queens of the Stone Age <i style="">Songs For The Deaf </i>(2002)
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<br />Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-72010113661657345852009-08-11T10:58:00.000-07:002009-08-11T11:35:17.069-07:00A scene I love<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeZMGD4Hdjtu21ORHB2r1XY2tCDOipRYr0MxFuP7Q2jWjlRZ8ALb4ViS2LA88lf9jPjwcw9k5UsmjIbREaLyVs01qVHEHKtyviGhe-gOcbFsyrtV5KQb9v4R76RLR2199YcISn/s1600-h/mclayton_tilda.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeZMGD4Hdjtu21ORHB2r1XY2tCDOipRYr0MxFuP7Q2jWjlRZ8ALb4ViS2LA88lf9jPjwcw9k5UsmjIbREaLyVs01qVHEHKtyviGhe-gOcbFsyrtV5KQb9v4R76RLR2199YcISn/s320/mclayton_tilda.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368776301289677234" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1y4jfvt9BMQHoXBoU7SymMq1pE5ftc01Hl4siJAyH-iagNj7-eyWm0IW-g0-rQkMU8Y_KR2aZZmlcatd411uDktkYnogOjplNybPxiOHqeIMY77FiWUQXtcXhQvyGyuHGVJT0/s1600-h/showmelove1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 225px; height: 163px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1y4jfvt9BMQHoXBoU7SymMq1pE5ftc01Hl4siJAyH-iagNj7-eyWm0IW-g0-rQkMU8Y_KR2aZZmlcatd411uDktkYnogOjplNybPxiOHqeIMY77FiWUQXtcXhQvyGyuHGVJT0/s320/showmelove1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368776293910391298" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIxdG4muJLDuNJoNLkmXZNxSShUhj6KbeWZgkOkaHZ85N71IolVPm_UtznUS5I9sSN8BJeDSTVzQpy-L7f4lHi0urjqrHvY40k9EHS7jK4el_RU0vIeEHLCT6XXpvAfHu70IFP/s1600-h/sopranos+sentimental.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 199px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIxdG4muJLDuNJoNLkmXZNxSShUhj6KbeWZgkOkaHZ85N71IolVPm_UtznUS5I9sSN8BJeDSTVzQpy-L7f4lHi0urjqrHvY40k9EHS7jK4el_RU0vIeEHLCT6XXpvAfHu70IFP/s320/sopranos+sentimental.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368776286795054834" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwTXonTq0Eujd06Vnj08xTFZ51W1PvgXHU76_V-0RWEZxmYlFVbY9APc-V2XfAgryMWRtXPNWibFkKlkbBtAAr_T1j8g6rMlOHBIWIF30tsrHV15yszHvIBgTf6sG6BTs0jGfd/s1600-h/yi+yi.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 175px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwTXonTq0Eujd06Vnj08xTFZ51W1PvgXHU76_V-0RWEZxmYlFVbY9APc-V2XfAgryMWRtXPNWibFkKlkbBtAAr_T1j8g6rMlOHBIWIF30tsrHV15yszHvIBgTf6sG6BTs0jGfd/s320/yi+yi.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368776283382807698" /></a><br />This week I watched <em></em>Yi Yi, <em></em> the Taiwanese movie directed by Edward Yang that in 2000 had the rare ability to beat out <em></em>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon<em></em> for Best Foreign Film in several key US film awards, even in the year that <em></em>Crouching Tiger<em></em> was supposed to be the foreign movie that made it ok to like foreign movies. There's a lot to love about <em></em>Yi Yi,<em></em> and there's a lot that I did love, but there's one very brief scene I want to talk about.<br /><br />In the scene, Ting-Ting, a thoughtful, quiet teenage girl who has not slept since her grandmother had a stroke prepares for a date. The teenage boy she's seeing was dating her friend, but since turned his affections towards Ting-Ting. She holds up a khaki skirt and a blue button down shirt in a mirror and contemplates them briefly. We then cut to her date, with Ting-Ting looking stately and beautiful in the same skirt and shirt. The topic of her outfit doesn't come up on the date, and perhaps Yang, who also wrote the movie, thought in his mind about Ting-Ting meeting Fatty, her date, and him saying "you look pretty" and that was the end of it. Perhaps he said nothing at all. One of the great accomplishments of Yi Yi is the ability to look at two characters ostensibly doing nothing and to envision a probable wealth of experiences before or after the moment we're witnessing that occurred between the characters were seeing. They are complex, but fully visible. As Fatty tells Ting-Ting during their date, all people's decisions and actions are beautiful, and movies help us live the lives of others in order to see this.<br /><br />The truth is the actions of that scene in which Ting-Ting picks out her outfit are related to that view of people as beautiful regardless of their decisions, and actually I immediately thought of three other movies and works that had a similar scene - a character in private determining what he/she would wear, and that outfit showing up later with little consequence. Still, every time I've seen this scene, it makes me realize that what I'm watching has been written with an eye of what people go through to convince others that we're ok, by coming up with details that conceal themselves. A writer and director going through the trouble of contemplating what their characters do when we're not looking, because we all do it, go through motions to make our insecurities concealed.<br /><br />Here are the other scenes and what they meant. In <em>The Sopranos </em>season 5 episode "Sentimental Education," Carmela prepares for a date with AJ's principal while she and Tony are separated. We don't quite know yet that he and Carmela quite have feelings for each other, but we do see Carmela analayzing her looks in the mirror and are drawn, perhaps for the first time in <em></em>The Sopranos,<em></em> to the sight of Carmela's cleavage. Yet when we see Carmela at dinner, she looks beautiful, composed. Robert, the principal, compliments her on how natural she is. We know he's not wrong, but of course, even a sense of being natural requires effort.<br /><br />Another. In the superb Swedish movie <em></em>Show Me Love<em></em>, directed by master humanist Lukas Moodyson, we're shown, like no American movie has truly captured, the behavior of teenagers who are as fully irrational, insecure, and who have not developed into full adults yet. <em></em>Show Me Love<em></em> has so much love for its characters, and you share that love with them. The movie is about two young girls who develop feelings for one another, but the moment I knew how much I loved it was in the observation of Johan, who becomes, briefly, the boyfriend of Elin, the gorgeous blonde protagonist. Johan, in a mirror before meeting up with his friends, obsessively fixes his hat so that it sits at the exact right angle on his head. This simple observation, to me, defines the life of teenage boys - so much effort into the presentation of who they are.<br /><br />Finally, the most notable example - Tilda Swinton in <em></em>Michael Clayton.<em></em> Swinton won an Oscar for her work, and I think so much of it comes back to the contrasting scene in which we're introduced to her character, Karen Crowder. In it, we see her being introduced to her company, speaking regally, keeping her act together, cross-cut with her at home, trying on her clothing, practicing her speech in the mirror, working out her professional gesturing, stumbling over her words. <br /><br />When speaking to Swinton on the red carpet at the Oscars, critic Richard Roeper described this scene as showing Karen's "vulnerability." I don't think that gets at the scene exactly correctly - it doesn't show us her "other side," it shows us the mask Karen's corporate guise is hiding. It shows a person barely keeping a lid on her anxiety and panic. It shows her terrified of being "found out." This scene is, of course, longer and more intricate than the others, but it shows the same sense of consciousness. When an actor and writer combine to truly understand a scene in which a character gets changed - it understands the secrets we all keep just to do things described as "every day," the pressure to appear ordinary. Maybe as this scene becomes more recognized, it'll start to appear in works I find artificial, but for now, this scene is an indicator that I'm seeing a true work of art.<br /><br /><strong></strong>Pictured: Ting-Ting's lovely white dress in Yi Yi, Carmela's date in The Sopranos, the young women of Show Me Love, Swinton in ClaytonEthan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-77704595233959230812009-07-28T10:38:00.000-07:002009-07-28T11:31:02.089-07:00Massaging the History<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmDJIcrTkZM05m9YoYYBO_17ojXMr0YQQUYoaELB2888BxNZjohyd4rRQiZecnxm4h-PF-6wL5e26mxdIK3EY8RtVWTnrKPXGC9gvex47YgP0NdGmrKh_NKTOXe3wNTxhO_sf_/s1600-h/block+party.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmDJIcrTkZM05m9YoYYBO_17ojXMr0YQQUYoaELB2888BxNZjohyd4rRQiZecnxm4h-PF-6wL5e26mxdIK3EY8RtVWTnrKPXGC9gvex47YgP0NdGmrKh_NKTOXe3wNTxhO_sf_/s320/block+party.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363580314813290786" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilZUa3f2KVRUJLozMdsjA672WrnjIt9GK3Mw2h_fXz25VcyZZDnsnOn9BhHaPqb5pF6H-rIMNg72eTNTCYkMg7lnNwuWbwwLrDeyIE27605FDi2Ei-z7XlvUNsBp4wo2MSTosu/s1600-h/KimGordon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 186px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilZUa3f2KVRUJLozMdsjA672WrnjIt9GK3Mw2h_fXz25VcyZZDnsnOn9BhHaPqb5pF6H-rIMNg72eTNTCYkMg7lnNwuWbwwLrDeyIE27605FDi2Ei-z7XlvUNsBp4wo2MSTosu/s320/KimGordon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363580306657817762" /></a><br />This past weekend, in a dizzying music-festival haze, I got to watch Sonic Youth headline the Capitol Hill Block Party here in Seattle from a window in an office building just above the stage. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, the city of Seattle closes Pike between Broadway and 12th in Capitol Hill, turning one of its most bar, restaurant, and coffee shop heavy areas into what is basically a 4-square-block concert venue full of indie performers, overpriced Miller High-life tall boys, and Seatle's best hipsters wandering around (I found two people wearing my favorite Sleater-Kinney <em></em>Dig Me Out<em></em> t-shirt from 1997, no doubt in anticipation of a set by current screaming-girl-semi-punk reigning champs The Gossip).<br /><br />Watching just above the stage in a semi-VIP stupor caps off a decade of rather insane devotion to Sonic Youth for me. I've followed every movement of their career since buying <em>Daydream Nation</em> as a junior in high school. I maintain that their work from 1985-1995, between <em></em>Bad Moon Rising<em></em> and <em></em>Washing Machine<em></em> is the longest, greatest streak of artistic relevance and perfection, with each record a triumph of rock's greatest not-quite-punk noise artistes. The band has now made 6 records since then, roughly one every two years, and that doesn't include any of their strict-noise-symphony SYR recordings that get them branded as pretentious. <br /><br />Anyway, the career of Sonic Youth is not what I want to write about. Instead, from my office window, I found myself, in one blissful moment, yelling to Kim Gordon as she moved her immaculately chromed-out high heeled shoe to her foot pedal thing, "Kim! I Love you! And I love your dress!" She was wearing a tight chrome mini-skirty dress thing that made her look like a metal go-go girl. Kim Gordon, mind you, is 56 years old. When you look at her up close, as I was lucky to do in meeting her, briefly, 3 years ago as the band toured for <em></em>Rather Ripped<em></em>, you notice a few more wrinkles, and her petulant black-eyeshadow-heavy eyes that always look a little fearsome, a little unpredictable, and very very commanding.<br /><br />Kim plays bass and guitar for Sonic Youth, along with her husband Thurston Moore, and Lee Ranaldo. She sings lead on roughly 30-40% of the songs on each album. Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney once called her the greatest female influence of all women in rock because Gordon was, unlike most female rockers, an equal in her band - a guitarist on other tracks, a mind coming up with ideas, etc. <br /><br />The truth is, she also is essential to the personality of every Sonic Youth record. Moore may sing on more songs, but in a way, he's a sort of bellweather for each album, the anchor by which Gordon's flights of fancy return to, and where Ranaldo's poetic asides - 1 or 2 per album - jet back to as well. This year, Sonic Youth released <em></em>The Eternal,<em></em> their 15th proper album, and initially, I was less interested in it than in any previous record. This week at Block Party, though, Sonic Youth - as they typically do when touring in support of an album - played almost the entire thing, and only 4 songs from their back catalogue, each of which was made before 1990. They proved to me a couple of things - that the album deserved an additional listen, and that they were just as good as they ever were.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong, <em></em>The Eternal<em></em> is not as good as their 85-95 run of perfection, but it is a well made album by good professionals. The reason that the record is not great is the same reason that the band probably won't make a full out bad album - the band approaches each record like a painting, specifying their noise and furious anarchy to each track until it sounds just off kilter enough, but not so much so that it loses all comprehension as a song (although, it should be said, it used to lose all comprehension as a song. And when it did, as in 1985's <em></em>Bad Moon Rising,<em></em> it was a better album. Not that they should try and make that album again). If you listen to the opening song from 2006's <em></em>Rather Ripped, <em></em>, "Reena," you'll hear it - it's a song that isn't actually that interesting, Gordon simply singing a refrain of "You keep me coming home again," but the music and production of it turns it into a pretty serviceable, not bad rock song.<br /><br /><em></em>The Eternal<em></em> finds Gordon actually creating the best songs with her at the helm since <em></em>Washing Machine<em></em>, and it's because she again finds her defiant, childlike, petulant, shrieking, vulnerable core again. Thurston Moore's songs on the record are, almost universally, unnecessary. Not <em></em>bad<em></em> per se, but unnecesary. Gordon's songs are necessary. On "Anti-orgasm," she breaks out a bitchy chanting that reminded me of <em></em>Washing Machine<em></em>'s "Panty Lies," a Gordon classic. On "Sacred Trickster," she (and the band's jangly guitars with her) commands "I want you to levitate me!" with the sort of sexual ferocity she brought to her best tracks 25 (!) years ago. I kid you not, this song could have fit in on 1987's classic <em></em>Sister<em></em> except she wasn't as commanding then and didn't know what she wanted to say with the same specificity.<br /><br />The greatest song on the record, by all accounts even the best song of SY's Block Party set, is its final number "Massage The History," which I think is Gordon singing in a voice she's never broken out before. She sounds old, vulnerable, her voice groaningly low, like a lover before bed, exhausted, singing to a flame, "wishing you were here with me, wishing we could massage the history, the history." I have no idea if it's correct, but in my mind, it's a song to Moore, of longing for the sense of familiarity they share by experiencing the entire Sonic Youth experience together. "You're so close to me" she sings like a long string of moaning in the song's bridge (or, whatever its "middle" should be called), and it's true - she and Moore are like one entity of rock noise and expression.<br /><br />How did she make a song - and, indeed, a record of songs - full of this much feeling and discovery? The truth is, I've counted her out since 1998. Here is a brief trip back through the history of Kim Gordon songs in Sonic Youth's post-<em></em>Washing Machine<em></em> "adult" phase.<br /><br /><br /><strong></strong>2006 <em></em>Rather Ripped<strong></strong><em></em><br />Gordon sang the album's opener "Reina," and, basically, a couple boppity songs - a love anthem "The Neutral" ("He's not a poet or a mystic... he's just neutral"), and "What A Waste", the most accurately titled song ever at Gordon's helm. Her best number on here is the slow-burning, beautiful "Turquoise Boy," but like the album around it, Gordon on <em></em>Rather Ripped<em></em> plays the part of a competent rock professional. Her voice is at her most Neco-esque and straightforward.<br /><br /><strong></strong>2004, <em></em>Sonic Nurse<em></em><strong></strong><br />"Pattern Recognition" is a strong album opener, but like the <em></em>Ripped<em></em> songs, is fairly straighforward. That's true even of wannabe wacky tracks "Dude Ranch Nurse" and "Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream," a giddy love fest for Mariah Carey, its chorus of "Hey hey little baby breakdown." That song is at least fun, but Gordon's squeaky-girl delivery is just a pose to contrast with the material. The truth is, I believed these good times much less than the good times of "Panty Lies" or <em></em>Goo<em></em>'s "My Friend Goo," which are just as off-kilter, but you believed them. The album's beautiful penultimate number "I Love You, Golden Blue" is one of the best SY songs of this decade, but is as close as SY has ever come to a slow dance.<br /><br /><strong></strong>2002, <em></em>Murray Street<em></em><strong></strong><br />I do believe <em></em>Murray Street<em></em> to be the great album of Sonic Youth's "adult," post-1995 phase - it's warm and happy, and you feel happy for them for being in a place to produce it. The Gordon songs are good - "Plastic Sun" is bitchy and loud, and "Sympathy For The Strawberry," at 8 minutes, is a build to be proud of. Still, are they as good as Gordon as her most unhinged? I can't say they are.<br /><br /><strong></strong>2000, <em></em>NYC Ghosts and Flowers<em></em><strong></strong><br /><em></em>NYC Ghosts and Flowers<em></em> is perhaps the most underrated of all of Youth's albums ever - immediately dismissed by most, it's the last of their conceptually driven records, each of Moore and Gordon and Ranaldo's tracks aligned on the same notion of regret, mystery, ghostliness. The album is the most claningly abstract of the Sonic Youth recordings that aren't labeled SYR, but <em></em>Ghosts and Flowers<em></em> is mournful and haunting. Gordon has one No Wave ramble, "Lightning," that I never listen to. There's "Side2side" which is sorta neat, but is mostly a joke. Her real contribution (it's a short album) is "Nevermind (What Was It Anyway)," which is at its core the heart of the record - dismissive of her, if not the entire alternative movement (it is titled Nevermind, after all). I love it, but in its petulant half-growl, I'll just say I believe her more now.<br /><br /><strong></strong>1998, <em></em>A Thousand Leaves<strong></strong><em></em><br />And this is where we lost her. <em></em>A Thousand Leaves<em></em> is the first Sonic Youth record to fail at its intentions and ushered in this modern, half-way there era of who they are. Lee Ranaldo's songs are extraordinary on the record, Moore's are solid, but from a different, melodic planet. The song "Hits of Sunshine (For Allen Ginsburg)" hints at who they are now - it's an 11 minute ode to a poet. Now Sonic Youth had become elder statesmen of the fine art community, so, they sing about fine art. Gordon to me on this record lost her mind, and not in an appealing way. "French Tickler" and "Female Mechanic Now on Duty" molest her themes of female subjugation and start to verge on caricature. "Female Mechanic" especially sounds to me like Gordon trying to call a do-over on "Washing Machine," arguably her greatest song, ne, work of art. The album begins and ends with more noise rambles - "Contre Le Sexisme" and "Heather, Angel." But mostly, the curious element is "The Ineffable Me," full of shrieks and spoken word and outre "shock" cussing: "A cushy job/ a pussy's job/ a cumjunkie's job/ makes my dick throb." Gordon has always pushed the sexual nature of her songs, and that's fine, but this seems like either a climax of all of her work, or producing those elements that borders on tedium. In <em></em>Washing Machine,<em></em> their previous record and last great work, Gordon's songs climaxed in "Little Trouble Girl," a song of sexual vulnerability (its teenage character finds herself pregnant), and you imagined leaving the teen of Gordon's subconscious lost and wandering to adulthood.<br /><br />What was there, then, to make of "The Ineffable Me" (maybe it can take the best-titled song award from "What A Waste")? In a way, that song, pushing Gordon's approach so far forward made her lose it. Her songs are for the most part, until <em></em>The Eternal<em></em>, seviceable, good songs by a good person and a talented artist. Sonic Youth has always managed to be an incredibly stable band living incredibly stable lives (Moore and Gordon have been married for 25 years!), perhaps because they get their noise and confusion out through their music. Yet "The Ineffable Me" was too noisy and too confusing, too ineffable, and ultimately, too untrue. It's not until "Massage The History" that I truly glimpsed the Gordon that was left behind at the end of <em></em>Washing Machine<em></em>, and I marvelled at how truthfully she grew up into an adult. <br /><br /><strong></strong>Pictured: Gordon, and my head from our spot above the Block Party on Pike, Gordon sorta visible in the Silver Lamme thing in the middle of the stage.Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-46063264895933603572009-07-20T10:12:00.000-07:002009-07-20T11:18:43.036-07:00Death waltz<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4UBm2gUa1FXIC8y9ncQNzmGD7cTtLZGsc_JZXt54hkTNEkwZlIJMNrxKzDmCEc9v-DQorIi00lKAOMyQHxLhyphenhyphenHwfUYgaWwQpIIG52JyVzZlLxa-b7cxpQWzFAtOoCiwUqP7HK/s1600-h/BlindWillieMcTell.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 253px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4UBm2gUa1FXIC8y9ncQNzmGD7cTtLZGsc_JZXt54hkTNEkwZlIJMNrxKzDmCEc9v-DQorIi00lKAOMyQHxLhyphenhyphenHwfUYgaWwQpIIG52JyVzZlLxa-b7cxpQWzFAtOoCiwUqP7HK/s320/BlindWillieMcTell.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360608038683018786" /></a><br />I sat down to write about the songs that help me cope with loss, but I knew that would be a piece that would never mean very much to me. My father died two weeks ago today as I write this, a Monday, and the week that followed would be a difficult one. However, it's not as though a calm, unencumbered life was occurring before. My father was sick for 19 months, and this year, my father's "bad" times during treatment for his colon cancer were worse. Sometimes he'd need morphine and wouldn't be able to speak or interact much, except for the rare protestation to something, a sad muffled response to let you know he was still around, still processing everything he saw before him.<br /><br />But maybe I'll go back a little bit further. I love music. I spend so much of my energy writing about music, trying recapture the experience of feeling, truly feeling, a great line, or chorus, or guitar part. I never thought that my obsession was anything out of the ordinary until I met people who were surprised and impressed with my own musical knowledge, but then again, I grew up in a house with my father and my older brothers, whose reaction to music was similar to my own. My oldest brother Josh, 7 years older than me, was my first example of listening - to awful, awful music. It was 1989, he was a fan of Janet Jackson and Tears for Fears and most of all Madonna, as were the vast majority of teenagers at the time. Then, my Dad, as he would until his death, listened to Bob Dylan and the Band and Van Morrison, artists we made fun of him for. So far, this is the same story of any children born to parents who, in their teenage years, found a promise and release in that sort of music as it was released. We will never know what it was like to live in a time when this music was the new music of the time.<br /><br />When I went to college in 2000, my music taste was different from my father's, and then somewhere down the line, it got a little bit closer. I owned many Bob Dylan albums, more than anyone else I know, but less than my father. I have a fondness for the Band and Van Morrison without the same unconditional love and awe of everything they touched. Again, this is not especially the point. <br /><br />In March of this year, I think, or maybe April, or maybe February, I was home, and my father was not doing well. I was there for a weekend and our interactions were almost all from his bedside. He was in bed most of the day, but would get up on occasion - to shower, to change into pajama pants, to do things that sufferers of colon cancer must do on a daily basis that they too will ask their children to leave the room for. Knowing what he went through at the end, this was actually a relatively functional time for my father.<br /><br />But there was something else he'd get up to do - put on a cd. Other people might argue with the logic of putting your stereo on the other side of the room when you were sick, I certainly would have mine near me, but Dad wanted to get up to flip through his cd's and pick one. This day, it was The Healing Game, a 90's "comeback" cd of sorts by Van Morrison, and I must use comeback in quotation marks because it was an album, basically, for aging fans like my father who continue to pay attention to his career, and this album had a slightly larger fan base that who you would intuitively think that would encompass.<br /><br />Dad listened to four or five songs from this record, and I recall hearing "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "Sometimes We Cry" for years. This day, Dad put on his socks and played those songs as he walked around the room. When you're sick, walking around a room is something you must plan to do, work up to, think about, tell people about, and then finally do. If you do it like my father did, you push yourself to make it last for four or five songs. The final, of course, being "The Healing Game," to which I may always remember him sliding on the carpet, punching into the air, as though mocking Jake LaMotta preparing for a fight in Raging Bull, a movie for which my old video copy sat by a TV. Who knows when the last time Dad watched that movie was, but I know it was likely in his mind - my father's memory is like my own, and some things stay put.<br /><br />I want to talk about the word "may" for a minute in the preceding paragraph. I may always remember Dad sliding on the carpet, punching the air, an act which had a certain significance to my father, who probably was in the middle of the knowledge that, finally, he will never recover from the illness that ails him. I can say I may always remember this image in this context because I don't listen to that song on my own. I don't even like 90's Van Morrison. The song is not one of the 8700 or so on my iPod, and will not come up on random. I've now mentioned my Dad's love of the song and album to many people and played it at my Uncle's house while we had a reception for my father's funeral. I thought of this many times, and when an association like that is rehearsed enough times, it forms a memory that is difficult to erase. Perhaps I would have forgotten that had he recovered and played the song in other contexts around the house, as he had for years - while cooking, while talking with me over coffee, playing in the background as we planned our day. Because those things won't happen again, and I will likely not play it, the song will not really have the chance to have its context adjusted.<br /><br />When I was a teenager, I used to attach songs to all of my friends, and even make lists saying which song reminded me of which friend. Julian, my best friend from high school, was "Man On The Moon" by REM, because he loved REM and I helped him get an email address that referenced it. I think. Now, thinking of those page long lists of songs attached to people I have very little relationship with but remember pretty well, I can't think of any others. Though we often talk about the songs we attach to other people, we are typically using songs from our own lives and forcing them into a context they don't usually fit. It is July now, and many stations and music sites will talk about their "songs of the summer," of which, regardless of your taste in music, the first one that will likely pop in your head is a song called "Summertime," be it by Mahalia Jackson or Sublime or Will Smith. They were smart to force that context on you by putting summer in the title.<br /><br />I once saw a "Summer Songs" list that included "Sherry Darling" by Bruce Springsteen, whose chorus, with a wailing sax behind it, sings "Well there's a hot sun burning on a blacktop." I can get behind this, that's a wonderful, hot night type of song, but again, the context is forced - I'll also enjoy the song and think of hot nights burning on blacktops in February or November. My friends have songs and artists they love, perhaps less than I love the ones I love, but probably very few things will "instantly remind me" of who they are or our memories; those things we force into place because this is the way in culture that we discuss music - as deeply associated with memory and experience. <br /><br />Music is, of course, deeply associated with memory and experience, but the length of those experiences retaining in our memory is more of a questionable thing. For example, for years, my friends and I had dance parties in the house some of us rented in Boulder. We'd play "What You Waiting For" by Gwen Stefani or "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," or "Roses" by Outkast - a song which prompted a deep breath and fast-as-you-can sing along to its "Well she's got a hottie's body" lightning-speed bridge in the song's center. We'd play many other songs too, but the truth is even when I hear those songs now, I am not, as writers of music would have us believe, transported back to those nights in those living rooms, though I know and remember those times being wonderful. The song is just a song. I do not remember the clothes I wore on those nights either, the food in the kitchen, the hat my friend Dylan wore, and in a way, all those things are equally relevant.<br /><br />We speak of music and our memories in a way that feeds our narrativization of our lives. We see our experiences as stories, and we feel saddened that we are no longer having dance parties to Outkast's "Roses" or sharing coffee with our fathers while Van Morrison sings in the background. Music can make you feel experiences of some kind while you listen to it, and so much music has moved me, I would hope that is self evident by now. Yet a song is just a song, and portable as it is, a song is easier to carry with us throughout our lives than the people we love and share experiences with, because experiences happen and vanish into collective storytelling. The song, as Robert Plant reminds us, will always remain the same.<br /><br />So, when my father died, I had some thoughts that came out in tunes that floated around my head. "Thought you should know Daddy died today/ he closed his eyes and he left here at 12:03." This is what Poe sings at the beginning of "Exploration B," on Haunted, a wonderful album she made dealing with the death of her own father. Easy enough for me to recall, but I had no choice on the matter, and I certainly never listened to that record with my own dad, who would have hated the whole thing. I thought of Dionne Warwick singing "A chair is still a chair, even if there's no one sitting there" in "A House Is Not A Home." I don't know why I thought of that line, maybe others have a better idea. For my father's eulogy, I spoke about Dylan's "Blind Willie McTell" and shared a memory of my father speaking to me of that song's meaning. The association I think of when its mournful guitar begins playing is especially sad, but that now perhaps has more to do with writing a eulogy relating to that song. And this forever will not be the case. I played Dylan's "Buckets of Rain" and "Man In The Long Black Coat" too, and I suppose I don't know why either. Again, I feel I had no choice in the matter, this is what I wanted to hear, and you don't argue with a man in my position going through what I was going through, whatever that was.<br /><br />Songs help you get through life, or they help me get through life, and sometimes you hear a great song and believe it was written to reflect your experience. Maybe it was. Maybe it's nothing like your experience. Maybe it has lyrics you ignore as inapplicable and focus on the lines you cannot get out of your head for reasons you cannot entirely put into words. My Dad is gone, and this was difficult, and the music remains, some that comforts me, some that I will have to keep on my shelf for a while. But a chair is still a chair, even if there's no one sitting there.Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-48544347288301896542009-05-31T17:17:00.001-07:002010-02-03T20:34:12.454-08:002008: The Best Year Of The 80sI haven't yet decided if the return of neon greens and oranges and pinks into the everyday styles of current fashion make me feel old, nor am I now able to hear what I thought a year ago when I first heard “Electric Feel” by MGMT and thought it the completion of the 80’s triumphant return into pop culture. It’s been happening for a while, for years even – back in 2001, when Jennifer Lopez had a hit with “Love Don’t Cost A Thing,” people in the know declared her giant hoop earrings, her open-shouldered shirts and big sunglasses a triumphant return of the 80’s into our every day style.<br /><br />But it wasn’t until these last couple of years, with techno back into the beats of top 40 hits by Kanye West and Timbaland, and with the blazing geometrical lines of fashion that the 80’s I know has returned – 80’s by way of the early 90’s. By then, in the pop of 1991 or so, the 80’s had become an embarrassing trash heap of trends. The hair metal bands (who, honestly, weren’t exactly of quality to begin with) had gotten into their 3rd for 4th generations – Britny Fox and Trixter had major radio hits instead of Poison and Dokken. Pop stars like Pat Benatar had given way to Cathy Dennis, and this was, without a doubt, a downgrade.<br /><br />And the loud fashions – not exactly quiet in the 80’s – had turned into the bright neons that are back now. Last weekend at Sasquatch – a what’s what of indie fashion trends – had so much neon in every pair of shorts, t-shirt, shoe, and sunglasses, I thought that I had reverted back to 1991. Actually it’s all of pop culture that has.<br />But first a theory – 2008 was the best year of the 1980’s. This is something I believe. If there is one song that sounded “new,” or fresh, or “revolutionary” to rock music, it was one that could not truly be considered far off from the trends in pop too. I’m thinking of “Kids” by MGMT, a song I heard blazing from probably a dozen speakers wandering around the Gorge campround. Its iconic, “old sounding” synth is the sound that made it ok for indie rockers to dance again. The Killers and Hot Chip and Scissor Sisters had been laying the ground work for a couple years, but with MGMT, American Apparel and all of Seattle had a sound and a signature to hang their fashionable hats on.<br /><br />And in 2008, there was so little difference between MGMT’s sound and Britney Spears’ – “Womanizer,” a plum gem of a robo-techno pop song, could stand side by side with it. Same with Madonna’s “4 Minutes” (which even more fetishized the early-80’s synth sound), Christina Aguilera’s “Keeps Getting Better,” Chris Brown’s “Forever,” Santigold’s “Lights Out,” Walter Meego’s “Forever,” Hot Chip’s “Ready For The Floor,” Chromeo’s “Fancy Footwork,” Rihanna’s “Disturbia,” Pink’s “So What” – each had a blast of synth that sounded just like things you might have heard 20 years ago, and though half of those songs were top 40 pop hits and half were indie rock songs, you could DJ a party straight through with them and get no complaints.<br /><br />It happened in fashion it happened in music. In movies, the best performance of the year was given by Heath Ledger doing a modern, updated, more “real” and “intense” version of a performance given 20 years ago by Jack Nicholson. That’s a great place to start – 2008 was the 80’s revisited after the 90’s and early 00’s made us appreciate what was “real.” The 90’s were subdued, back to basics, “understated” to make up for the ridiculous excess that defined the 80’s. It’s safe to say our hairstyles have not reverted to where they were 20 years ago (they’re still where they were 30 and 40 years ago), but that just proves my point – 2008 was the year we did the 80’s without the embarrassing stuff. No hair metal. No hair spray. No mesh shirts and no tiger-print spandex. The movies had real acting, were directed by real directors. Our action heroes were Christian Bale and Daniel Craig, men whose grit comes from having a code and a seriousness that cannot be deterred. <br />Now we know how to do things the right way, and can actually enjoy the parts we should be ashamed of. It’s not kitsch, it’s a sort of acceptance of the fun before the “serious” set in, while retaining the best part of the “serious” 90’s and 00’s. The truth is, this music is better than the pop and indie rock of 1988, bands are more competent and, with 90’s business savvy, know how to produce a more complete product. <br /><br />Which brings me to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the fantastic sunglasses. Whereas MGMT can accurately be described as “80’s influenced,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs go a step further – you could listen to “Heads Will Roll” or “Softshock” off of this year’s It’s Blitz and find it difficult to distinguish them from a song released in 1989 or 1991. I wonder if the improvement we made in 2008 has morphed into just a return to what we were. Sometimes I see these trends and feel old – I’ve lived long enough to see the world come full circle in pop culture. But then I realize this is where these trends have started – as nostalgia for a time when we took things less seriously, for the loud colors and excess of our childhoods. Now we’re adult enough to make these trends work. It’s Blitz is without a doubt the best album released thus far this year. How long can we maintain this 80’s trend? I don’t know, but I’m glad to be back in a pop culture and indie culture that’s enjoying itself again.Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-49618030319109261772009-05-26T14:09:00.000-07:002009-12-29T14:08:25.599-08:00Sasquatch, celebrity, and a very good weekend<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX2awCR-MoaFhQtb0Dy4m6l5rHQ57AWTjklu7icKuihn6_MENQYj8prsdfscDJzSmf4DrEgzwp5LJUtOL39w1pM7yIf7A-VXaTNc4rN1LsfwBDUgmuy6nsFPpZmaC77_i0MPTF/s1600-h/3559290753_06d35dbda9.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340274329362279314" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX2awCR-MoaFhQtb0Dy4m6l5rHQ57AWTjklu7icKuihn6_MENQYj8prsdfscDJzSmf4DrEgzwp5LJUtOL39w1pM7yIf7A-VXaTNc4rN1LsfwBDUgmuy6nsFPpZmaC77_i0MPTF/s320/3559290753_06d35dbda9.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPgj1MCCs12BtVMh6EAy-rZS7HE7D-k1t3pP4_mFZtgvQO5sX7F1HeVYGW9_OrQTpftuFbV5Qkny6RqAgrlC9F2DPuy4wMnViljkKiSXqovsNU5lSDGCUB74A72THr69jdUioK/s1600-h/sasq5%2520003-thumb-400x300-5820.jpg"></a><br /><br /><div>It took me hours at Sasquatch - the Northwest's annual, awesome three day music festival over Memorial Day weekend - to realize that the black sunglasses with hot pink/yellow/green arms were not purchased by everyone, but were provided by a sponsor for the weekend, 1-800-Quit-Now, an anti-smoking group. You couldn't tell the difference between those sunglasses (of which the green pair I owned as a 2nd grader in 1990) and the ones that must have cost $70-100 in the Volcom or Ray Ban or Oakley variety that everyone else was wearing. </div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>How do I best describe these sunglasses? Very round in front, kitschily plastic, primitively assembled. Neon. Definitely neon. Everything is neon now, it turns out - board shorts in hot green, t-shirts of electric blue with a triangle in heightened shocking orange. For a while you could look from the hill down onto the mainstage and see fashion choices like a highlighter - a great neon yellow line from shirt to wristband to sunglasses. </div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>I'm 27 years old now, and I have to assume I'm above the average age of this year's Sasquatch attendees, so I have to wonder if the throwback to all things late-80's/early-90's is kitschy to your average college student, or it's of the same recycled fashion trends that brought us back "boot cut" jeans and fuzzy corduroy jackets. Now I see fashion that reminds me of the font used on Joan Jett's <em>I Love Rock and Roll</em> album covers, or the opening credits sequence of <em>Saved By The Bell</em>. I try and get more information about how much Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs reminds me of Siouxsie Sioux and find virtually no one online has mentioned the subject - to me, it just seems the most obvious conclusion.</div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>What a great time though. I thought often during the weekend about what a great idea music festivals like Sasquatch are - three days of nothing but listening to music, drinking, smoking pot, and doing nothing but meeting others and talking about music. I spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to look at this concert from the eyes of a 19-year-old than of a 27-year-old. In fact, when I met people, I found that one of the most commonly asked questions - by me and others - was how old you were. It defined a person's perspective of the whole experience.</div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>So now, I have two perspectives I don't understand in trying to frame what this weekend must be like to others - first, college kids, of which I am no longer one. Second, indie rock fans, of which I've always been totally confounded by. Let me talk about the shows that talked directly to the me's of the audience first. </div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div><strong>Nine Inch Nails<em>. </em></strong>Trent Reznor has been working out A LOT. He's huge! This was not what he looked like when he ran around in the mud during Woodstock 94 and knocked his guitarist over. He's 48 now, but with a good cropped haircut and successful brown dye, he looks ten years younger. More importantly, he looks like Bruce Springsteen. He jaunts with the same energy that never seems to dissipate, waves his hands in the air, runs around the stage with the same fervor. If the music wasn't so glum and noisy, it would feel like an identical show. That's high compliment - Reznor brought out his A material, and even made you want to listen to the work he's been doing since whenever it was you stopped paying attention to Nine Inch Nails (for me, it was since a casual listen to <em>With Teeth</em>, apparently 3 records back). Reznor sounds exactly the same as he always has, he remembers his strongest material even if it's songs you'd never thought he'd performed ("Gave Up" from 1992's <em>Broken, </em>or "Burn" from the <em>Natural Born Killers</em> soundtrack). Despite songs like "Terrible Lie" (Sample lyric: "Why am I seething with this animosity... Can this world really be as sad as it seems"), the result is totally, viscerally electrifying. Reznor's Nails launched an empire, not just industrial music, but in defining the entire expression of dismay and ambivalence by its fans. He deserves his King of Gloom crown still.</div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>TV On The Radio. </strong>It turns out 2008's <em>Dear Science</em> was so universally hailed by critics, TV On The Radio has fans who are college-aged now. I don't know why this thought never occurred to me, but it hadn't - the band's labyrinthine, evocative and meticulous lyrics must have connected with a younger audience, because by the time the band reached "Golden Age," everyone sang along. Part of me resented everyone knowing TV On The Radio, an art rock band who forges along with a personality that's so unique, they seem to be remaking rock around them. The set was extraordinary - a great plunge into the great catalogue the band has built up with increasing fanfare. For once I felt like the right age at the show, but then, it turns out, so did the rest of the audience (which, of course, also had plenty of members much older than I am).</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><br /><div><strong>Kings of Leon<em>. </em></strong>Kings of Leon have been around making well heard underground rock for so long, it took me a minute to realize - with the entire audience singing along to the ferocious "Crawl," played second in the band's headlining set - that this is one of the most successful rock bands in the world right now. <em>Only By The Night</em>, the band's 2008 release, is still in the top 20 nearly a year after its release, and somehow has spawned three hit singles (by whatever measure you use to call something a "hit single," however the singalongs to "Crawl" and the sorta-filler single "Use Somebody" are plenty great indicators). Still, Kings' appeal is to the drunken frat boy in all of us, a grunge and PBR version of The Rolling Stones. The band is heavy on filler - it becomes fairly clear the difference between a serviceable song like "Notion" and a truly, unmistakably great song like "Crawl" or "The Bucket" or "Black Thumbnail" (which loudly, brilliantly closed the set) is still quite massive: the former you enjoy because you're at a concert, but it just takes more work to love. Caleb Followill looks like a baby-faced version of Ozzy Osborne, or a rocker-faced version of Bryan Adams, but he holds a crowd like no one besides Karen O, who I'll talk about in a minute.</div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div><strong>Santigold<em>. </em></strong>Santigold is the plucky, adorable Brooklyn indie sensation whose awesome 80's throwback single "Lights Out" can currently be heard on a Sprite commercial (why, Santi, why?). Her set is even more 80's - a sign of smart branding - two dancers in high-wasted gold shorts and big round plastic shades, dancing ever so erratically, but mostly standing as blankly as a Robert Palmer backup dancer. She sounds just as wild on stage as she does on record, managing to hit all of those bird-call "kee-kee-kee"s on "Creator" without having to cough or anything. Santigold probably has a big indie following now, but with her hip-hop/punk/pop/dance sensibility, she's the sort of artist that people would need to go out of their way to dislike.</div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div><strong>Yeah Yeah Yeahs</strong><em>. </em>Without a doubt the greatest performance I saw all weekend was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I haven't seen them before, and I've read since their arrival with <em>Fever to Tell</em> in 2003, about Karen O's fiery onstage antics, but I hadn't thought much of them besides being another Patti Smith also-ran. She is, but so much more. With her shocking green tights, heavily-triangled neon and white mumu cinched off at the waste, and single pink glove with glow-in-the-dark stitching (see it on stage in the picture above), Karen O also is the indie college kid's female president of sorts. She has a trancelike smile, and her antics aren't "antics" so much as they are an expression of herself. Say what you will about the band, this woman has <em>presence.</em> Not only can you not keep your eyes off of her, she makes whatever song she's singing into a dizzy, energetic, whatever-goes evocation of the current revival of 80's and 90's synth kitschiness. Suddenly the highlighter slashed crowd has someone to lead them.</div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>But more than that, Yeah Yeah Yeahs impressed me not just as a great band - something I've never thought of them as before - but also of a band who's smartly at the top of their times. They rode the early-00's guitar revival back with <em>Fever to Tell</em>, pulled real Siouxsie Sioux 80's punk into 2006's <em>Show Your Bones</em>, and this year released <em>It's Blitz</em>, a techno-dance influenced album that follows the indie trend set by MGMT and The Killers to let some fun back in the rock paradigm, something that's worked so well I believe it's truly behind the early 90's revival that's so taken over fashion. I loved the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' performance so much, I bought <em>It's Blitz</em> on the way to work the day following the concert, and I realize that because of O, and because of the great, spitty sangfroid at the center of the record, it's pure Yeahs, and more importantly, a pure evocation of what youth trends are doing to music right now. In the early part of the decade, albums like <em>American Idiot</em> by Green Day and <em>The Woods</em> by Sleater-Kinney helped show rock at the forefront of anti-Bush political anger. Now people wnat to have fun again. The Yeahs anger then actually isn't that far away from their fun now.</div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>I'm never going to be younger again, so, I'll never know what it's like to be a 19 or 17 or 21 year old at Sasquatch, but I know that the music I loved in the 90's I thought of as the first music of its kind, a type of thing that all of music history had worked up to create. Now I see things more as trends, great bands happened in the past and great bands (albeit less of them) happen now. I often have said that 2008 was a great year for music and was, in its way, the greatest year of the 80's - 80's trends tookover music, fashion, movies, and in 2008, we did all of them better and without as much to be embarrassed about. This might be the first time I haven't thought it was better to be a teenager in the late 90's, when rock music was at a different type of peak - because life as a music fan, as led by Karen O's smile now, just seems like such a great time.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>I read one review when I got home about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs set that described the band and O's magnetism as something that "hasn't been generated since Nirvana." This, to me, was clearly a teenager writing - a common problem of rock writers, constantly overstating the excitement of seeing a great artist. Karen O, despite my frustration of not finding her original, is a true rock star - and in any case, even if she is repeating Sioux or Patti Smith (which she is), or Chrissie Hynde (which she is not, despite many claims - the similarities end at the haircuts) there are so few fiery rock women of this vein in rock history, a little repetition could potentially not be such a bad thing. I had always looked at the Yeahs a little competitively - taking some fame that should have gone to PJ Harvey or Sleater-Kinney, but this view undersells O tremendously.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>She sang an acoustic version of "Maps," the band's two-cord love song that everyone seems to know, and introduced it as the "Yeah Yeahs love song," and played it softly with an acoustic guitar. The song was already clearly quieter than the band's entire catalogue, and is hardly the first or best love song ever written, but O's drama and disarming smile is such that on stage, holding a finger to the audience on each "Wait - they don't love you like I love you," everyone not just sang along but <em>felt</em> along. If music like this is continuing to repeat all that we love and know of music, then let us forever have more of the same.</div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-40706352767773728452009-04-01T16:27:00.001-07:002009-04-22T18:36:19.936-07:00Heroes: PJ Harvey<div><div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8B6ipTz6_cXRDjM-mQRM55UqbOEOv_anddMsjdcspQKSjW_e8WPBCj0B95Y6wAzGJML01q-jsYhEP2NAh5xaR414a62bGcygxaUTJPgyitcbBFPnMgO7ebc8pYXnZGO27O8Au/s1600-h/pj_harvey.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327692895833646514" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 275px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8B6ipTz6_cXRDjM-mQRM55UqbOEOv_anddMsjdcspQKSjW_e8WPBCj0B95Y6wAzGJML01q-jsYhEP2NAh5xaR414a62bGcygxaUTJPgyitcbBFPnMgO7ebc8pYXnZGO27O8Au/s320/pj_harvey.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em>To mark the release of PJ Harvey and John Parrish's new collaboration </em>A Man A Woman Walked By, <em>I began writing my Heroes series, a long essay expressing my admiration for certain artists. This is about my ongoing love for PJ Harvey.</em><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><br />No Neuroses, No Psychoses, and No Sadness<br /><br />There is some agreement on a highlight of Sunday February 22nd’s Oscar broadcast was – the acceptance speech for the Best Original Screenplay award by Dustin Lance Black, the writer behind <em>Milk</em>. A friend of mine knows him, so I came in with the minor biographical knowledge that Black is a gay Mormon, and a writer for <em>Big Love</em>. He stated that he always dreamed of living in a land with equal rights, where he could, “one day get married.” And later, to the gay and lesbian youth of the world, “you’re beautiful, wonderful creatures of value.” Sean Penn went more directly for the Prop. 8 crowd a couple of hours later, discussing anticipating the “great shame which your grandchildren will look at you with” for being opposed to the side of freedom and equality. Grandstanding, sure, but it was hard to disagree with. Black, restrained by comparison, was very moving.<br /><br />That speech, certainly, is going to make Black an icon in the gay and lesbian community, the sort of role model teenagers can look up to. The gay world doesn’t have many gay male role models, not really. I’m a reasonably informed man, who would I say was a role model for gay men as a teenager now? Rufus Wainwright? Rupert Everett? T.R. Knight? I’m afraid I don’t know of many famous gay men.<br /><br />Regardless, I wouldn’t have looked up to them anyway. I never identified as gay as a teenager, and I don’t, truly, now. I have, I guess, “evolved” views on the matter, or at least they’re evolved to me. One term I used to identify as was “not exclusively heterosexual.” That one works, I guess, although it doesn’t quite hit the whole picture either. I don’t know what the whole picture is, but our society requires us to be reductive for brevity’s sake. If I tell someone that I’m dating a man, or made out with a man, people make their own assumptions, and unless that leads to a discussion, they will continue those assumptions. That is fine with me.<br /><br />Black was not speaking to the young Ethan Kutinsky’s of the world, the Ethan Kutinsky’s who were, probably, at their lowest points in 7th or 9th grade – at least, lowest developmentally, speaking of self-esteem. Black was speaking to the teenagers that are more likely to commit suicide, 3-4 times more likely, it seems – of the thousands of suicides per year, up to 30% are attributed to gay youth. Now, I actually believe it’s reductive to say the problem is even that simple, but clearly this is a problem, a major, major problem. Adolescence is difficult, and no one should be at a point to feel their life is worthless. Gay and lesbian and transgendered youth should know they are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value.<br /><br />People like me, cynical and argumentative, balked somewhere internally at that statement by Black – because I never, truly, thought that I was not. As a teenager, I used to have anxiety about my sweatshirts, about whether the armband was tucked in or showing, about the bottom elastic band, showing or tucked. I worried about the length of my pants and the part of my hair. As a high schooler, I approached the lunch room as a place of total terror. I went home at night feeling I had no friends, that no one understood me. Was I clinically “depressed”? I don’t think so – I was always very functional, did very well in school, never approached criminal behavior (or at least, was never at risk of getting caught), did not do drugs or drink at the time, and did not engage in much risky behavior beyond smoking cigarettes. I was a debater and was encouraged at that. I wrote for myself quite a bit and watched, with discriminate, confused taste, tons of movies and television shows. I was, by all social marks and indicators, completely, 100% normal. When taking those surveys asking about your state of mind, I would certainly mark that I occasionally had trouble sleeping, and often felt depressed. Yet on the truer indicators the “I don’t deserve to be loved” or “I’ll never find anyone that loves me,” I always vigorously disagreed. Whatever I was feeling, I had the foundation to consider it as temporary, and that I deserved to be happy.<br /><br />I survived, and truly, didn’t even complain much. People liked me, or they didn’t. I’m drastically different now, calmer, wiser, a better friend, someone who believes in himself. But also, I’m exactly the same, occasionally plagues by enough self doubts to keep me up at night, lonely, able honestly to say on occasion that I feel alone and without validation, but that I feel I continue to deserve the opposite. Is that not who I was then? Then, Rupert Everett was around, but I certainly didn’t see him as much more than a sorta-pretty face. In any case, then I wouldn’t have been willing to identify with a gay mainstream personality anyway, and certainly not as a gay person. Who were my heroes then? It’s hard to say. Before my music taste “evolved,” as they say, I read a great <em>Rolling Stone</em> article, written in 1997, about Fiona Apple. I stole my father’s copy of Tidal and listened, especially, to “Never Is A Promise,” a song that did give me quite a bit of strength. I was a huge fan of Tori Amos – then, not now – and watched whatever TV special she did at the time. I really liked Concrete Blonde and Toad The Wet Sprocket, though they were never all that popular. I thought Sarah McLachlan’s <em>Fumbling Towards Ecstasy</em> was one of the best albums of all time.<br /><br />I wouldn’t call any of these people heroes, though, and I’ve grown out of that taste anyway. Then, I would have produced an impressive, culturally-competent list of heroes, but they would have been meant to please. Now, I guess an artistic hero would be someone who shares my view of humanity through their art, but I would also try and make a list to please. David Chase and PJ Harvey come to mind immediately, but there are others, and it’s Harvey that matters most.<br /><br />I wasn’t coming out as a teenager, except as confused, as lonely, as feeling completely isolated from the world around me. I grew up in a high school that was all Christian and I was a Jew. I was not discriminated against, but I did not fit – I could not join many after school clubs, and I said I didn’t want to anyway, because I was an Atheist. I did not celebrate Christmas with my family – it was just another day, and eventually, I’d start working 12 hour days on Christmas because there was more money to be made that day. I was, simply, not included. I was also a little gay, or at least, I had no confidence with women and didn’t know what was wrong with me (clearly, in retrospect, nothing was). I thought I was ugly, and I was terrible at sports. I could argue very well, and excelled at Forensics. Still, my senior year of high school, I felt too at odds and misunderstood from them – I was not the same bitter, cranky smoker I had started as, and I had aligned myself to a group I no longer identified with. I was the definition of someone who would not be a part of any group that would have me as a member.<br /><br />No one understood me. Except PJ Harvey. Well, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but that’s a different essay (although, an interesting one – no one else in the world can realize her obligations? No wonder she spawned a cult). Peej. My father as a teenager had Bob Dylan, who I began to love later in life, but Peej had me, for the first time, in 1998. The song was “A Perfect Day, Elise.” At the time, I used to record <em>120 Minutes</em> on MTV on Sunday nights and play it when I got home from school on our tiny television on Mondays. I knew who Harvey was – she’d had an alternative radio hit in 1995 with “Down By The Water,” and <em>To Bring You My Love</em> had been one of the best reviewed albums of that year (I read the reviews religiously). But this was the first song I really cared about of hers, and I decided to buy the album it came from, <em>Is This Desire? </em><br /><br />Well, I suppose I liked it a lot, but that decision was rather predisposed. I knew I liked Harvey. <em>Rolling Stone </em>around this time aired its list of the 100 essential albums of all time since 1950, and had it narrowed down to 20 albums per decade. In the 90’s, they picked <em>Dry</em> from Harvey’s <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vf69Nmn3RyUSqo1SZ8vhyphenhyphenkOFvDa2LJnXSAkXCH1MfPwJR74YWqG_9mSkSN_Y9myHiNcuR4DaVbWB0Y298R6TgNhs7HuXfB-TlnXLbymH98MA9-cociBcgxpk6QB2Ce0k1Xm5/s1600-h/dry.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327692902823810402" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vf69Nmn3RyUSqo1SZ8vhyphenhyphenkOFvDa2LJnXSAkXCH1MfPwJR74YWqG_9mSkSN_Y9myHiNcuR4DaVbWB0Y298R6TgNhs7HuXfB-TlnXLbymH98MA9-cociBcgxpk6QB2Ce0k1Xm5/s320/dry.jpg" border="0" /></a>catalogue. Around the same time, too, Courtney Love discussed how she and Woody Harrelson would argue about what music to play on the set of <em>The People Vs. Larry Flynt</em> – he liked Alanis, she wanted to hear Harvey’s <em>Rid of Me</em>. I thought Love must represent the taste I was supposed to have.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div>I bought <em>Dry</em> after <em>Desire</em>, and my reaction was less than immediately enthusiastic. Still, my determination to have good taste was unstoppable, and I listened to the album until songs started getting stuck in my head. I knew immediately, at least, that I loved “Dress,” which was propulsive and had a terrific melody. I knew I loved “Water,” which was passionate and emotional. I used to go through all my albums then and give the songs letter grades – I had to have the taste, eh? – and those two were immediately “A+”’s, lest I get left behind.<br /><br />My love for <em>Dry</em> actually did arrive at some point. When you hear “Oh, My Lover” at a time you’re feeling low, the line that sticks out is “Why won’t you just say my name, and it’s alright,” a protest, and a revocation of that protest at once. “Happy and Bleeding” tries a little too hard, I thought, to be pissy and coy about it, but I felt pissy and coy at the same time often at that age. I felt so at odds with my debate team, it was the album I’d wander away to listen to by myself. My music was who it was and didn’t want me to be any different either. If it was pissed off, then I could be pissed off. Even better, we matched, we were in company in our misery.<br /><br /></div><div>This must just be a product of Harvey, who went into music young, in her early 20’s after a formal education as a sculptor and performance artist. Harvey brought performance art with her to music making, turned songs into a type of artistic platform. Her voice could be high, low, melodic, infuriating. She could whisper, she could scream. She could hit notes or destroy them. She could play an instrument or she could show no evidence that that even interested her. Her album covers were statements in and of themselves – the drowning beauty on the cover of <em>To Bring You My Love</em>, the smeared, off-color lips of <em>Dry</em>. Sometime in 2004, I was driving with a friend when the B side “Uh Huh Her” came on my iPod. Harvey once described the song as “Two ferrets in a bag trying to get out” and sang the song in concert with the world’s harshest bright light directly in her face. My friend said, with no humor whatsoever, “This song sucks.” I immediately launched into professor mode: “Well, why does it suck?” I asked. The song is unfriendly, harsh like the lighting, off key, and has a first verse comprised entirely of excruciatingly long pronunciations of the word “rejection.” It was vintage Harvey, enacting the emotions she was trying to chronicle.<br /><br />But that took me years of loving Harvey, to get to the place where I could get professorial in my defense of her. First, there was tackling <em>Rid Of Me</em>, as I did when I was 17. I’m not sure I’d recommend <em>Rid of Me</em> for a casual 16-year-old. For one, it was very sexual, and I was far form feeling comfortable with my sexuality, let alone comfortable with the feeling of sexual humiliation and desire and ugliness. Sexual ugliness, at least. The feeling of ugliness I was familiar with. I thought I was ugly, with my bowl cut that didn’t change except in length between 6th and 12th grades, and my nose and ears that were always too big for my face until college. “You’re not rid of me” is actually a fairly singable lyric, it turned out, and I felt it, despite the <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCIsBMPB78xUx-_56NfGFeDSr7RxLHZ-BXhyphenhypheniz6O4rYCQkpNdJg5IdTzsFjofhWX14Shzx6TLbcHAJZ4BXgR7oip1WCHzZ_ON9WeBypkKieGZda-sURI02EG5J8ACcaHaZklIK/s1600-h/rid_of_me.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327692905754691298" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 301px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCIsBMPB78xUx-_56NfGFeDSr7RxLHZ-BXhyphenhypheniz6O4rYCQkpNdJg5IdTzsFjofhWX14Shzx6TLbcHAJZ4BXgR7oip1WCHzZ_ON9WeBypkKieGZda-sURI02EG5J8ACcaHaZklIK/s320/rid_of_me.jpg" border="0" /></a>humiliation and frustration. It was uglier than I was, and I wasn’t friends with people who were uglier than I felt. Maybe I wasn’t so bad. Much as in “Oh My Lover,” the lines of the most desperation kept me returning – “every day I’m hurting,” “I’ll make you lick my injuries.”<br /><br />“Dry” was the type of emotional rock ballad I’d loved throughout the 90’s – Fiona and Tori and Alanis would be proud to have written it, but none would gather that internal hatred and frustration. Plus, all would be afraid of the sexual connotations of a line like “You leave me dry.” Harvey loved those connotations, and that was the intention, to be sexual and provocative. I didn’t hear those then, instead “you leave me dry” explained a wealth of feeling – exhaustion, humiliation, anger, and sadness. There was “50 Foot Queenie,” which was so feminine and empowered, I didn’t like that I felt its raging guitar licks and screams as the source of an anthem, but I did. I felt excited to hear the song, empowered. Here, late in <em>Rid of Me</em>, after a litany of miseries and inadequacies, was a song about being King of the World, a song of excessive boasting that is raw and furious. I loved it.<br /><br />I also loved “Legs,” a screechy, maddening song that comes third in the album. Does it have a melody? That’s debatable. It has many shrill shrieks and histrionics. Its lyrics were about a woman who is inconsolable at the death of a new lover because he was “going to be my life – dammit!” Does Harvey even like this histrionic, misguided woman she’s singing as? Certainly, she lets Harvey, the possessed, come out. On the cover of <em>Rid of Me</em>, Harvey’s hair looks like it was dipped in tar as it sprays itself across a tattered, ugly wall. Her face is unattractive and uninterested. She spoke to my deepest humiliation. In that Rolling Stone blurb about <em>Dry</em> as one of the great albums of the 90’s, Lorraine Ali wrote that Harvey “reclaimed every negative stereotype about women that feminists had hoped they erased.” True, and even better, she let us admit those feelings of inadequacy still lingered and haunted, that they are part of us. Rid of Me took that thesis even further. “I’m begging you love can be ecstasy” she sings to a lover in desperation at the end of <em>Rid of Me.</em> It sure wasn’t ecstasy the way she sang about it, it was miserable, it destroyed your life, it made you feel worthless and ashamed. It also let its listener release those feelings, and I was full of those feelings.<br /><br />Was I a beautiful, wonderful creature of value? I like to think so, and certainly Harvey would have no reason to disagree, but she didn’t tell me that. Harvey told me how miserable she was, and it was the first time I felt truly understood by anyone. I was 17 when I finally bought <em>To Bring You My Love</em>, and after <em>Rid of Me</em>, it was such a relief to hear that liberating anger and humiliation exist in an album that took absolutely no effort to fall in love with. <em>To Bring You My Love</em> begins with a guitar that’s quiet, alone, and suddenly gains in force even as it almost never changes. Harvey’s wail is low, but melodic. “I’ve lain with the devil/ cursed God above/ forsaken heaven/ to bring you my love.” “I was born in the desert” sounded like the ultimate declaration of defiance in the face of conformity. Better, the anger that made me love “50 Foot Queenie” was in full raging force in “Meet Ze Monsta,” a song of liberating, exciting vitriol. “C’Mon Billy” was as emotional as anything Harvey had ever written before, but without the wailing of “Legs.” “Send His Love To Me” was furious in every way, an unceasing acoustic guitar and lyrics that do not back up one inch – “How much have I suffered?/ Dear God I’ve served my time/ My love becomes a prison/ My love my only crime.”<br /><br />What is this “love” that Harvey has brought with her, dying, across deserts, that she laid with the devil to preserve, that she’s served her time for? I thought love was supposed to make the birds sing and fill your life with hope – is this the same love? Yes and no, it turns out. She is, on the surface, singing of wanting the love of another, of, perhaps, even being heartbroken by the love of another. These are themes we are familiar with in music – being in love, wanting love, losing love. But like Derrida was to Saussure, questioning the foundation of his terms, Harvey’s interpretation of love is an entirely different approach. Love before was “powerful,” but this love threatens like a monsoon to take her to hell, because, after all “Hell ain’t half full.” Love before was something you wanted with all your soul, but never before did you offer the fates an ultimatum: “Send me his love, or send me to my grave.”<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwnpc13eXl8U4KL4MXdf1pcE0XBgEaTYX1La5BS67Kx_RPTPn-Ipslf0O3duzZdYhlAs5Y_nJ8r6KCEZGYQl6kmp1mmG9QjCO9khcVBucemzQAbxmbQTDbkuCHo_-w64occIFf/s1600-h/to+bring.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327692906376359650" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 301px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwnpc13eXl8U4KL4MXdf1pcE0XBgEaTYX1La5BS67Kx_RPTPn-Ipslf0O3duzZdYhlAs5Y_nJ8r6KCEZGYQl6kmp1mmG9QjCO9khcVBucemzQAbxmbQTDbkuCHo_-w64occIFf/s320/to+bring.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Once, when I was older (23 to be exact), I did shrooms and had one of those drug-laden epiphanies. Sometimes you express art that people understand, that people acknowledge is an example of “truth,” and by expressing truth, as the age-old axiom goes, you’ve expressed beauty, because you’ve pierced preconception and established experience. What real art is, I thought, was to go a step beyond that, cast off what you’ve done and say to everyone, “No, you still don’t understand.” What we say will always get in the way of what actual experience is, and that is never more true than when we feel we’ve connected with people. This is a struggle that continues, ongoing. I continue, even absent drugs, to believe this is true, and like Dylan before her, Harvey’s career is an embodiment of this. She captured misery in <em>Rid of Me </em>and it hadn’t at all sounded like the misery she’d supposedly captured in <em>Dry</em> that made her an indie sensation. Then, she was still miserable in <em>To Bring You My Love</em>, but it was also something more – metaphysical, alchemizing, powerful.<br /><br />By the time I’d worked up chronologically to <em>Is This Desire?</em>, my first Harvey record, I had a completely different opinion of it. Now I thought of it as a short story collection – something that would be even more affirmed later, in college, when I discovered that much of the work seemed to contain references to J.D. Salinger’s<em> Nine Stories</em>, the most revered of short story collections. Half of the songs had someone’s name in the title – “Catherine,” “My Beautiful Leah,” “Angelene,” “Joy,” and still my beloved “A Perfect Day, Elise.” The rest were in third person. This was a detached Harvey appearing on the cover as if in filmstrips, framed in different images. The final question of the title track, appearing last on the disc, “Is this desire? Enough? Enough? To lift us higher?” Simple, sure, but again, Harvey wants to approach the question from a dozen different directions, male and female, young and old, sane and crazy. Desire leads us to misery, to murder, to drinking, theft, suicide, and regular old unhappiness.<br /><br />It’s interesting to me that Harvey was to me what Dylan was to my dad, not just because Harvey has modeled so much of her career on Dylan’s – on his ability to cast aside his previous self, to change up, to dodge reporters, and to question the existence of his own meaning. I feel I get her. I didn’t identify with other gay people, or with straight people. I didn’t identify with Jews but I didn’t quite identify with atheists either – they were too certain everyone was wrong. What I identified with was a questioning of the core of every definition, a wonder at meaning itself. Harvey is a hero for those that say what we’ve said about ourselves does not prepare us for what we experience, and often it makes it worse. This is the same theme that Joni Mitchell speaks of in <em>For The Roses</em>, or Tom Waits in <em>Bone Machine</em>, even, to an extent, the Dylan of <em>Highway ’61 Revisited</em> (the title track of which Harvey covered on <em>Rid of Me</em> to jarring effect). Later, Harvey would say that <em>Is This Desire?</em> was her favorite of her old records, but I sort of refuse to believe it – I think it’s just Harvey being difficult, shrugging off what seems to be the most conclusive thing anyone can say about her – that <em>To Bring You My Love</em> was a high few could match, including Harvey, who made other great albums (and in fact, never a bad one), but she demurred such a conclusion. Instead, later, at the end of the decade, she stated she couldn’t listen to <em>To Bring You My Love</em>, stating it simply reminded her of a low in her life to which she could never return – her desperation was on the record to her, and she hears it. That should maybe be the proudest thing for Harvey, her misery was truly captured on record. Some sad people sometimes write sad songs. Harvey wrote songs of sadness.<br /><br />We converged, PJ Harvey and me, I think, in 2000. She released <em>Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea</em>. I was 18, in the middle of my Freshman year of college, and having epiphanies of my own, left and right, all the time. A friend died and I was miserable. I felt lost in a giant campus of people and thought I was small and insignificant. <em>Stories</em> begins with “Big Exit,” a song where Harvey considers suicide: “Look out ahead/ see danger come/ I want a pistol/ I want a gun.” This is the first song on the record, the song that throws down the gauntlet – solve her ongoing misery or take the big exit herself. But she doesn’t take it. Instead, she pictures throwing a lousy ex off a building with her bad fortune in “Good Fortune.” She thinks that someday she’ll find a calm place of hope in “A Place Called Home.” She draws a line from her<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHvjPVRAQSaQW9Fv5F-53xKjz9YwOpYfjjQsaxKdwRLqZYCO2qVwXndNDSoHTZvBikxQ4LMNSlZnWVmfzJdHWr8TkQ3Gxcy0hCB7qU_LntSlLNclXKE8TnapKxzpTBN7xmVMtJ/s1600-h/stories.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327692905018937378" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHvjPVRAQSaQW9Fv5F-53xKjz9YwOpYfjjQsaxKdwRLqZYCO2qVwXndNDSoHTZvBikxQ4LMNSlZnWVmfzJdHWr8TkQ3Gxcy0hCB7qU_LntSlLNclXKE8TnapKxzpTBN7xmVMtJ/s320/stories.jpg" border="0" /></a> heart to yours in “One Line,” and finally, with laconic ease, admires a quick, “Beautiful Feeling.” Instead of killing herself, she slowly coaxes herself into a reason to live.<br /><br />Critics seized on her “happiness” right away, but somehow I missed it – or, heard it and didn’t feel it. It took a while for me to get there. I read the lyrics to “Horses In My Dreams” and thought they were a little ham-handed, “like waves, like the sea,” the same sort of contrasting lyrical style echoed in the title of the record, seemed a little meaningless. Also, that “Beautiful Feeling,” the duet with Thom Yorke on “This Mess We’re In” that seemed, truly, not that messy. “This Is Love,” so direct – “I can’t believe life’s so complex/ when I just want to sit here and watch you undress,” she sang. Really?<br /><br />Really. I’m not sure what clicked in it. I think it was the piano of “Horses In My Dreams” that after a couple of listens stopped being “slow” and became, instead, reflective, like waves and the sea parting to open upon her great epiphany, “I have pulled myself clear.” In the same way, a nice song called “You Said Something” also revealed itself on future listens – peacefully sitting atop a rooftop in Brooklyn (this album is also seized upon as being Dorset-bred Harvey’s “New York” record) and reflecting upon a lover who “said something that was really important.” What did he say? A critic at <em>Rolling Stone</em> seized on this as the “heart and soul of the record” – not what he said, but the fact that Harvey, once so intimate, was now holding back.<br /><br />It is the heart and soul of the record, in a way, but not because she doesn’t tell us, rather, because it doesn’t matter. The point is the moment, an opportunity to reflect and be happy, to take in the lovely accordion melody that seems to sweep its lovers to heaven. The album revealed itself as beautiful after some listens in the way that <em>Dry </em>and <em>Rid of Me</em> did, but in the opposite direction – they went from being a pleasant listen to dragging, kicking, ultimately successful attempt at happiness and peace. “We’ll float,” Harvey informs her love in the final song, “take life as it comes.” Harvey had learned how to be happy, but had done it on her terms. She made peace with the danger ahead and pushed forward. This was the album of a lifetime, and I don’t mean it’s Harvey’s best (a close second behind <em>To Bring You My Love</em>, if that’s your question), but it’s something you work up to feeling because the feelings take a lifetime to truly believe. In the same way, my misery had given way to an understanding, a belief that happiness could be achieved if you let yourself believe in simple, happy things – that life could be as complex as just wanting to sit and watdch someone undress. The Harvey, wise speaker for the miserable, turned out to be as apt a believer in all that was right with the world.<br /><br /></div><div>It’s because we all want to believe, underneath, that things are good, and that they can work out, and that we can be happy. Harvey does too, although sometimes she took a while to get there. We shared the same outlook – our lows were different, hers were metaphysical and all-consuming, and mine were just the normal sadnesses of a teenager, the same sadness that made me identify with the wails in “Legs” or “The Dancer.” Like her, too, I wanted to take life as it came, and to pull myself clear.<br /><br />I felt that I did. <em>Stories From The City</em> is, in a way, a bookend that Harvey never really moved on from, or perhaps it is simply my love for that record that makes me feel like she’s never moved on. Even in subsequent records, records featuring songs of sadness and misery, she’s never entirely convinced me that her previous epiphanies are ready to be thrown out. In fact, she’s built on them.<br /><br />I saw Harvey for the first time live in April 2001, opening at Pepsi Center for U2. She described her excitement at the time, saying she’d listened to them since she was a kid, but what an interesting platform for an artist like Harvey, whose best selling record in the US, <em>To Bring You My Love</em>, had only sold 355,000 copies. U2 was touring at the time for <em>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</em>, an album that has sold 12 million copies. I was thrilled to see Harvey before the crowd at the auditorium, but it wasn’t until much later that I’d realized the bravery of her set list – to come in front of an auditorium with just an electric guitar and sing “Rid Of Me,” and then, do a set of her most noticeable songs, only to close with “Horses In My Dreams,” and really, with the words “I have pulled myself clear.” I don’t think I’d be able to ever sing – or scream, for that matter – “Lick my legs, I’m on fire” in front of an audience of any size, but that is Harvey’s singular bravery. She did “Dry” and “Angelene” and “Sheela Na-Gig” and sounded incredible, picking really the highlights of a pretty extraordinary career, although she avoided songs from <em>To Bring You My Love</em> entirely – perhaps this was still part of the period in which she could not hear songs from that record without being reminded of her own sense of misery at the time.<br /><br />She also performed a song I had not heard – months later, I’d find out it was “This Wicked Tongue,” a song included as a bonus track on <em>Stories From The City</em>’s UK and Japanese releases. This led to me obsessing over Harvey’s endless stream of B-sides and rarities. Harvey, like Dylan and Bruce Springsteen before her, seems to obsess so much over the structure and theme of each record that sometimes her best songs don’t wind up on it. “This Wicked Tongue” actually captures the themes of Stories nicely – and loudly – but I couldn’t possibly imagine a place on the album in which it would fit. Same goes for “Sweeter Than Anything,” from the sessions for <em>Is This Desire?</em>, a beautiful song from the perspective of a woman watching her lover succumb to dementia; a beautiful song that is most certainly not desire, and therefore, not really relevant to the record.<br /><br />Harvey’s B sides are a thrill to discover, one by one. In a review of Harvey’s 2004 record <em>Uh Huh Her</em>, <em>Time </em>mentioned that Harvey had never made a bad song. That’s sort of easy, in a way – Harvey is such a postmodern artist, tweaking her sound (she described <em>Is This Desire?</em> and <em>To Bring You My Love</em> as full of “dark, unsettling, nauseous-making sounds”) to fit her concept for each record that “good” and “bad” are beside the point. For <em>Uh Huh Her</em>, one iTunes-only interview was labeled, by a quote from Harvey, as “Ugly is a good start.” Harvey might be flattered by calling a song of hers or two as “bad.”<br /><br />It’s sort of not true though, in all of the annals of Harvey’s B-sides, I find a couple that are, at the very least, not great. “Kick It To The Ground” is so bitter as to be ridiculous (“Look at what I found/ a flower on his grave/ kick it to the ground!”), and “Bows & Arrows,” a B-side from <em>Uh Huh Her</em>, with a full chorus of backing Harveys mimicking the final word of each phrase (Harvey: “Bows and arrows tipped with poison,” Chorus: “Poison! Poison! Poison!”), is sorta obnoxious. There’s “My Own Private Revolution” from Stories, whose lyrics take Harvey’s new-found serenity into the realm of clichéd nothingness (“Fate has always, one might say, driven me, from place to place” or “I have found purity, simplicity inside the face of children,” and there’s its rather plagiaristic title to begin with). There’s “Daddy,” from the Rid of Me days, which is so bizarre as to be impossible to listen to, but at least that is intentionally difficult. The others – none of which are “bad” so much as uninspiring – are proof that even great artists can’t get each idea to work.<br /><br />The fact that I’ve heard dozens of Harvey outtakes and truly only find 3 that are less than astonishing is pretty extraordinary. The rest are not right on her records, but they do elucidate her view of things pretty nicely. “Maniac” (from the <em>To Bring You My Love</em> sessions) would have made Lorraine Ali’s thesis easier, with its chorus of “I need a man!” “Long Time Coming” grunts its way through<em> To Bring You My Love</em>’s biblical themes. “Harder” is like a 2 minute play on the psychology of sex. “The Northwood” is a thin round that turns into a wail of self loathing. Each of those are vintage Harvey but are wrong for the records. That would be most true for her on <em>Uh Huh Her</em>, when Harvey cut out two of the strongest songs for the record, including the one that bears the record’s title, because, as she said, “They sound too much like PJ Harvey.”<br /><br />Harvey refuses to repeat herself, which is the core of why I love her so much. Around 2001 and 2002, I finally heard <em>Dance Hall At Louse Point</em>, a collaboration with long-time guitarist John Parish, released in early 1996 and recorded just after <em>To Bring You My Love</em>, was credited, where Harvey was concerned, as by Polly Jean Harvey, removing herself even further from the record. It’s not at all like <em>To Bring You My Love</em>, but in a way, it’s darker, more exciting. Polly Jean does things PJ might have thought distracting on the tightness of her record. She screams the chorus of “City Of No Sun.” She takes the terrified, crazed child-voice of a woman in love with a violent religious lunatic in “Taut.” She quite beautifully assumed the role of a “Civil War Correspondent,” and out-blaséd Peggy Lee in a low-simmer cover of “Is That All There Is?”<br /><br />I had long ago, by this point, decided what a triumphant artist Harvey was, but it might have been this record, which is so jagged, uneven, and different, that solidified it – because the unvarnished nature of the songs reveal more of her personality. The opening tremulous guitar of “Girl” that segues into the fiery, electrifying blues of “Rope Bridge Crossing.” And “Heela,” one of Harvey’s most virulent, exciting loud numbers. It ends with a quick, jaunty song, “Lost Fun Zone,” and a high-pitched Harvey begging someone to “take me, one more time.” This is Harvey at her most unmistakably miserable, but it’s hard to deny that misery made her something, allowed her to reveal herself. Maybe she feels better now, but I’ve never been so thankful someone felt so low. It proved her misery as something really charming and loveable. Everyone who’s felt so low should be told this once in a while.<br /><br />Critics seized on the usual Harvey misery during the release of 2004’s <em>Uh Huh Her</em>. A glowing <em>Entertainment Weekly</em> review called the record a “jagged, edgy winner,” but postulated that something terrible must have happened in Harvey’s personal life to cause such a reverse from Stories’s happiness. <em>Rolling Stone</em> even gave the record a lesser review, saying that it was too familiar. The songs on <em>Uh Huh Her</em> are miserable-ish, sometimes, and certainly Harvey intended a “dirtier” sound – described by Harvey as “looking for debased, distressed sounds” – but familiar, I think, is a misreading of the record. “The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth” opens the record with a familiar “debased” loud 4-track guitar, a grind and a single drum, but is it familiar? I don’t think so. “Your lips taste of poison, you’ll be the unhappy one,” she sings, and she may be angry, but she’s also something else – vengeful, scorned, and actually, pissed off at someone else. She seems, actually, quite fine. The second song, “Shame,” has a chorus of “Shame is the shadow of love,” and it doesn’t sound like humiliation – now it sounds like wisdom.<br /><br />This is an album made by an “adult” Harvey, one who was happy and is scared of sliding backwards. Cautiously, in the slow-burning “The Slow Drug,” she can be heard licking her lips and, in her quietest baritone, singing “Could you be my calling?” In “The Letter,” she sexualizes the writing of a letter, seductively railing “Wet the envelope – lick and lick it.” She is taunted by a familiar song on “Cat On The Wall,” but just begs anyone to “turn up the radio!” These songs are darker, but they’re far from hopeless. I remember an interview she granted at the time – and I wish I remembered from where – in which the interviewer questioned her on her return to “darker” themes. The interviewer recalls her beginning to get angry, but then stopping herself, and saying “Well if that’s what you heard, I can’t argue with it. I also think there are songs like ‘You Come Through’ and ‘The Desperate Kingdom of Love,’ which I think are two of the most hopeful songs I’ve ever written.”</div><br /><br /><div></div><div>They are, and they’re right at home on the record. In fact, I think “The Desperate Kingdom of Love,” desperate as it may be, is arguably the most “beautiful” song she’s written. Sung in a soft, high register with a single, strummed acoustic guitar, she sings to a lover that he was “a sickly child” knocked down by the wind, that nothing can help him now, and also, that “there’s another who waits from behind those closed eyes/ I learned from you how to hide.” What she’s singing about is a soft, wise acceptance of the lengths love drove her and her past lovers to, a wisdom that elevates the kingdom from the desperation. <em>Uh Huh Her</em> ends in one of her saddest songs, “The Darker Days of Me and Him,” which is unapologetically raw and upsetting. But it is, also, the purest plea she’s ever made – “I long for a land where no man was ever born. With no neuroses, and no psychoses, and no sadness.”<br /></div><div>Life cannot be hope all the time, and sometimes we are elevated, out of that desperate kingdom. Other times we long for another land. This <em>Uh Huh Her</em> was, without a doubt, a revelation by one of our greatest artists.<br /><br />Harvey’s released another album since then, 2006’s <em>White Chalk</em>, an album I honestly think of as the first “minor” album of Harvey’s career, even though I still felt it was the best album of 2006. Her abilities are still intact, and Harvey, after having taught herself the piano, does conceive a new sound for herself. It seems, at times, like <em>The Others </em>set to music – a lonely, scared girl trapped in a Dorset attic waiting on “The Devil” to “Come here at once.” The high piano keys combine with her highest, most inconsistent vocals in early songs like “Dear Darkness” that are, in a way, a tired revelation, an evocation of childhood fears. Critics sorta liked it, and sorta were over her.<br /><br /><em>White Chalk</em> revealed itself a little more to me over time, enough to make me like it quite a bit. The title track comes in the center of the album, and is unforgettable – it sings of Harvey (or, whatever persona she’s created for the record) walking the beaches of her Dorset home and imagining the chalk as bones of those who came before her on the land, of scratching her palms to reveal the ghosts underneath. It makes sense that this is the song that connects the “child” songs of the album’s first half with the “adult” songs of the second. If you imagined this as a traditional record with sides, “White Chalk” would end the first side, and “Broken Harp,” with its quiet plea of “Please don’t reproach me/ for how empty my life has become” would pick up its second side with an unspecified amount of time elapsing between them. This is the story of a woman who survived being a child begging for the devil and darkness. It is, in a way, fictional, but it’s also the story of Harvey – a woman who pleaded for darkness and deliverance early in her career, and perhaps surprisingly, found beauty and security later in life. The song that is most unforgettable here follows. It’s called “Silence,” and I hear so much of myself in it – also a survivor from the darkness, also surprised to find security as an adult. “I freed myself from my family/ I freed myself from work/ I freed myself/ I freed myself/ and remained alone.” It climaxes in a beautiful, harmonious chorus of the word “silence,” over and over again.<br /><br />I can’t begin to tell you the ways in which I identify with this song. These are the words of someone who has gotten exactly what she wanted, but finds, in a way, that it’s worse – it’s made her so self sufficient that it leaves her alone. “Somehow I think you’ll find me there/ that by some miracle you’d be aware,” she sings to no one in particular – someone must know the pain she still suffers from, the human emotions hidden beneath the exterior of a beloved, praised artist, right? “Silence” is the core of <em>White Chalk</em>, and it elevates the record from being as “minor” as it could have been. I also hear the same sort of bittersweet wisdom in “Before Departure,” a simple song of Harvey, quite melodically, thanking her friends, and recognizing her need for them. Like her, I feel that way – alone, with a dark past that’s “done,” and with a silence and revelry that remain.<br /><br />Harvey said in making this record that she fell in love with the piano, with playing an instrument that you “push.” She also said she found the record “uplifting,” and would listen to it in her living room, whereas with her previous records, she could not even bring herself to listen to it. I think she is not seizing on the record’s positivity – of which I don’t even think it exists, as lovely as it is – but on the lack of personal connection she has with the material. <em>To Bring You My Love</em> and even <em>Uh Huh Her</em> were a from-the-ground-up exorcism of her feelings, they had very much earned her pain. <em>White Chalk</em> is a great piece of work by a great artist, but it is not the same as a Harvey masterpiece – it doesn’t have the sense of saving her from her desperation, a purity of personal expression that makes the other records such gripping, overwhelming experiences.<br /><br />In a way, I hope Harvey stops for a while, until she feels things are essential again, and it’s because I love her so much, because I never want to have to be disappointed in her. So far, I never have been, though it disappoints me to even think of <em>White Chalk</em> as minor. Critics felt free to give Harvey lower reviews of the record, often in much smaller print space, emphasizing her removal from the world of critical adulation. There was a time it was in vogue to praise Harvey as one of the all-time greats, but time has revealed that was just the regular world of rock critics, playing the game of who-are-we-supposed-to-praise-now. There was a time Harvey would have been the highest ranking female rock artist, such as when, in 2002, <em>Q</em> magazine called <em>Stories</em> the top album ever by a female rock artist, and <em>Rolling Stone</em> included it in the Top 50 of albums by female rock musicians. In 2008, <em>Entertainment Weekly</em> did an issue listing the 100 Greatest “New Classics” from 1983-2008. Now, Cat Power held the #13 spot while <em>Stories</em> was listed – at #97. There was a time when it was clear that those two numbers would be switched.<br /><br />That’s because I’ve come to realize that the music I fell in love with when my music taste changed as a teenager – the Sonic Youths and Fiona Apples and Harveys – were just the hip music for an indie snob in the mid-90’s, and critics have to update their tastes to stay relevant. The 2008 picks for great artists are different, and those are artists that are more and more forgotten. Still, there is no modern artist like PJ Harvey, and the last ten years of music were not as good as the previous ten. Harvey embodies my idealism of what art should be – it should speak to an experience we all go through, then reject its listeners, because the music still does not expressing what we go through. Her music then comes back and approaches that expression from a different angle. I’ve taken the journey with her shifting personae and expressions over the years, and I’ve found that they echo life more than anyone else I listen to, and because of that, I still think she is one of the greats. I think of her as I do Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, but in a way, by being modern, she is forged on their music and found more to build on – she is better because she is aware of all that came before, and goes further. </div></div></div></div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-17352106214960540932009-03-12T15:40:00.001-07:002009-03-15T18:21:48.169-07:00The Empathizers<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwz2MCZA9Abon1TUKkK-4RpP8bqBmMOIUk-bTVqj9NyVGKNa81BNISFGBcKU4h1U4wWagepUrwMHOC_IwhoIrGew8cAM5ooKXt2V4Ww4HowoN7Mbz8QjkG-LAuAHwvpS9Mbh0F/s1600-h/office.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312435438759656578" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 218px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwz2MCZA9Abon1TUKkK-4RpP8bqBmMOIUk-bTVqj9NyVGKNa81BNISFGBcKU4h1U4wWagepUrwMHOC_IwhoIrGew8cAM5ooKXt2V4Ww4HowoN7Mbz8QjkG-LAuAHwvpS9Mbh0F/s320/office.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />I’ve worked in mental health for years now, and I’ve found that psychologists begin working at a very young age with people with “emotional disturbances” on the differences between “sympathy” and “empathy.” Sympathy could be defined as “feelings of favor, support, or loyalty,” whereas empathy would be defined as “intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.” In other words – sympathy is involves you “feeling badly” for someone else, and with empathy, you feel it yourself too.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQxeQO7-gBH8Dc1Ly1L8lwNCG-GdC_cMIRISDWz3f161HKSw1l-63B_S2MVj-rfl3ys8p-ZOsU338_yi8YElZX-I9P9gRdAhSynr4IEN5Z5I9kSqZ22CIvMIHXrzvGtHZP2jot/s1600-h/artie+bucco.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312435435955351170" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 180px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQxeQO7-gBH8Dc1Ly1L8lwNCG-GdC_cMIRISDWz3f161HKSw1l-63B_S2MVj-rfl3ys8p-ZOsU338_yi8YElZX-I9P9gRdAhSynr4IEN5Z5I9kSqZ22CIvMIHXrzvGtHZP2jot/s320/artie+bucco.gif" border="0" /></a>This is likely a rudimentary distinction for most of us, but I find it interesting in the movies and television. TV drama, for example, trends on sympathy – a show like <em>Grey’s Anatomy</em> hopes to get you sympathetic towards its characters’ romantic tangles, but not so much that you’re unable to walk away and do the dishes afterwards. True “empathetic” portraits are rarer. One I discussed years ago on a blog was <em>The Sopranos</em>’ “Luxury Lounge” episode in which poor chef Artie Bucco’s feelings of inadequacy about his life become a source making the audience as uncomfortable as he is.<br /><br />And maybe that’s the key difference – one makes you sad, the other makes you uncomfortable.<br /><br />I was thinking about this watching the modern master of discomfort in television, BBC’s <em>The Office</em>. Its Christmas Special followed up its influential 2-season, 12-episode run tracking down its characters (allegedly) 2-3 years in the future. For people who were a fan of the wrenchingly miserably uncomfortable antics of Ricky Gervais’s David Brent, they’ll absolutely love the scenes in <em>The Office</em>’s Christmas Special, which include disastrous blind dates, mocking the overweight, a hopelessly sincere music video, and even a game show appearance that made me yell “Stop, just stop! Please stop!” Ending that Christmas Special – even though that special is a rare BBC <em>Office</em> production with a happy ending – I still felt myself experiencing humiliation for David. I winced through every interview he provides, hoping he won’t say the wrong thing to fuck up the great situation he somehow manages himself into by episode’s end. Perhaps I identify too closely with waiting for myself in my own life to also say the wrong thing. Perhaps Gervais knows I feel that way.<br /><br />Empathy is tricky, I think, because it’s so much more than “feeling the feelings of another.” Or, that’s exactly wh<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSr_aemCErmInP5hOQdJXuKrtxfLBstBaajUAnizi-LKNmp2IsH7UK5TL_BP_alOgAySs5_b3wqQhP891V7rnEG_XRNsddSi2S90YExTJnvb9EWz6G3o5N5Ho2vHBCQXarTToS/s1600-h/buffy+-+dead+things.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312435440167249602" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 220px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSr_aemCErmInP5hOQdJXuKrtxfLBstBaajUAnizi-LKNmp2IsH7UK5TL_BP_alOgAySs5_b3wqQhP891V7rnEG_XRNsddSi2S90YExTJnvb9EWz6G3o5N5Ho2vHBCQXarTToS/s320/buffy+-+dead+things.jpg" border="0" /></a>at it is, but the interpretation differs. During a sad scene in <em>Buffy The Vampire Slayer</em>’s third season, in which Buffy’s vampire true love Angel breaks up with her, I identified that Buffy was deeply upset, and I said to myself “poor Buffy,” hoping for her to feel better. During a sad scene in <em>Buffy</em>’s sixth season, in which Buffy, driven to intense confusion over her sexual affair with vampire Spike, pounds the crap out of Spike up on the steps of the police office, I felt myself a sense of humiliation, a feeling of having done the exact wrong thing, a sense that I, like Buffy, was just a slave to the emotions I can’t help but feel.<br /><br />There are a number of movies that have done this to me – so many movies, following the example of more realistic movies of the 70’s and then in through the revolution of independent films of the 80’s and 90’s, simply follow their characters’ actions, giving occasional, if any, explanation. That makes the movies’ subjects a source of our scrutiny, and eventually our own feeling. I’m thinking of poor Charlie in <em>Mean Streets</em>, who’s a walking caldron of guilt everywhere he goes, or of Roy Gideon in <em>All That Jazz</em>, whose daily routine of pill-popping gives way to his own internal psychic pummeling. By the end of those movies, I felt about as at wit’s end as either of those men, and all I’d done for the previous two hours was sit on a couch.<br /><br />This is what people always say about movies: they “transport” us to different times and places, they ask us to leav<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvc3xAhyphenhyphenpg_zESYrtAy9QD4NwkHxUX-Zh7OnPUjqBlJFqSuXzTJBsKl2UgGN0auK7HWwATurDhteP9dXS6v5dtomrn5KDOOuEcNGkFzZcbN_1Q9SlfskrxZIKlbbqmYPxqWqgj/s1600-h/thirteen%2520photo.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312435442559131762" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 245px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvc3xAhyphenhyphenpg_zESYrtAy9QD4NwkHxUX-Zh7OnPUjqBlJFqSuXzTJBsKl2UgGN0auK7HWwATurDhteP9dXS6v5dtomrn5KDOOuEcNGkFzZcbN_1Q9SlfskrxZIKlbbqmYPxqWqgj/s320/thirteen%2520photo.jpg" border="0" /></a>e our world. They make us feel something we did not expect to feel. This is true, I suppose, but some movies do that with different emphasis on the make and the feel. A number of movies have done this to me in recent years. I remember not totally loving Catherine Hardwicke’s <em>Thirteen</em>, that movie about a modern 13-year-old and her frantic mother, played by Evan Rachael Wood and Holly Hunter, but I do remember how I felt afterwards – not “cleansed” or “happy” or “sad,” but that I had to continue on in the vain of Evan Rachael Wood’s Tracy, knowing everyone had known what she’d gone through, the drugs she did and the sex she had. Wood’s performance was “great,” I suppose, but it was great because I eventually felt what she felt. For around 100 minutes, her life was my own.<br /><br />Roger Ebert recently wrote an in interesting piece in his online journal about what it means to him when he cries at a movie. He stated that he doesn’t cry in movies that are “sad,” not even <em>Terms of Endearment</em>, but in moments of great warmth and kindness between people. He also said for him “crying” means not the waterworks some of us associate with movie-watching, but a feeling of thickness in his throat, a quick jerk of the eyes, something that is rather close to crying. I can agree with that entirely. When I think of the moments that really got me going in movies, it’s moments like that – when Shrek tells Fiona in <em>Shrek</em> “you are beautiful.” When the father in <em>Bend It Like Beckham</em> tells his daughter that everything he’s done in life was for her to have opportunities. When in <em>The Straight Story</em>, a man decides to help a total stranger drive across Iowa to see his estranged brother.<br /><br />This is true about movies in which I “feel for” a character – it’s said a great deal about characters, but the experience is different than we’ve described. When I say that, I want to be clear what it means – it means that I can no longer question a character’s bad decision, their humiliation, sadness, or despair, because it’s become mine. Like Bruno in <em>L’Enfant</em>, who got me to identify with him even th<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1JGXBybgeajZv7SbJnPlCgpNaBS9Ax-Et2vlsfBFBA2W8U-vpiE_5G7gsU-5ay-zv3kRjIJhvKhXAVwc3Vt-29SMRz0ZlYyNamtaUylkTkl_lxuC_dYThHUW5Rt2nbqF3OKqS/s1600-h/l_enfant_1_groot.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312435442926648866" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 214px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1JGXBybgeajZv7SbJnPlCgpNaBS9Ax-Et2vlsfBFBA2W8U-vpiE_5G7gsU-5ay-zv3kRjIJhvKhXAVwc3Vt-29SMRz0ZlYyNamtaUylkTkl_lxuC_dYThHUW5Rt2nbqF3OKqS/s320/l_enfant_1_groot.jpg" border="0" /></a>ough he sold off his own baby to make some money. Like Chuck in <em>Chuck & Buck</em> who may have embarrassed himself and his best friend for about an hour straight during his movie, but only engaged my own feelings of romantic obsession.<br /><br />In all of those movies, it’s the discomfort that awakens my own sense of empathy, and perhaps this is more of a statement of myself than of moviemakers. But then again, why make a movie that asks its audience to be uncomfortable if a filmmaker doesn’t feel that that feeling is something we understand and want to explore? Great movies, especially great modern “independent” movies, ask us to share our experience of the worst parts of ourselves, and, in effect, drain them of their weight. We wouldn’t laugh at the David Brents if we didn’t have a little of them in us too.Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-1839412147371202102009-03-05T12:07:00.000-08:002009-03-05T12:57:33.365-08:00I'm an animal, you're an animal too<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKcFLPfTwIXo0cBiFcb5iSTn092AlhVJBDzvOCowf6hSvOkJ7rf8ULVfNoeRLzMdDKwZusF5iir0gUyHOsT2gQf4S4_xs4gg3z1vurFKGeAkDlUfCBQXr8BQ7ZS1w5Zx6zVPmz/s1600-h/cyclone.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309798344138988898" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKcFLPfTwIXo0cBiFcb5iSTn092AlhVJBDzvOCowf6hSvOkJ7rf8ULVfNoeRLzMdDKwZusF5iir0gUyHOsT2gQf4S4_xs4gg3z1vurFKGeAkDlUfCBQXr8BQ7ZS1w5Zx6zVPmz/s320/cyclone.bmp" border="0" /></a><br /><div>I’ve been trying to listen to U2’s new release <em>No Line On The Horizon</em>, really I have. <em>Rolling Stone</em> gave it a 5-star review (although, they did that for <em>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</em> in 2000 also, and I listen to that album about as much now as I used to – which is to say, never), and it’s been stated in the mainstream press that this album will “revitalize” U2 in the same way <em>Achtung Baby</em> did in 1992. Well, much has been said about U2 in the mainstream press this week, and for a band that is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has sold (according to Wikipedia) 140 million albums worldwide, and has even a Noble Peace Prize nomination under its lead singer’s belt, perhaps that is to be expected.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>I can’t help but think, however, that there’s just not that much to say about <em>No Line On The Horizon</em>, while a separate release this week, on March 3rd, I find so much to say about, so much that I haven’t really been able to listen to <em>No Line</em>. That release is by an artist familiar to my thoughts, Neko Case, who this week released <em>Middle Cyclone</em>. It started a bit last week with the promotional video attached to <em>Middle Cyclone</em>’s Amazon page – Case discussing her decision to record part the album in a barn on her Vermont property, with a “piano orchestra” comprised of 8 pianos Case and her cohorts found for free on Craigslist. What a strange decision, and what an interesting piece of the Case mythology – a woman whose catalogue has featured oblique consternations the likes of fast trains, deer eyes, Ukranian murder tales, eagles, lady pilots flying into mountains, women in canneries, ghosts wandering across South Tacoma Way, and the vapor of dead pilots, abandoned pianos in a barn in Vermont seems, in its way, a natural progression.<br /><br /><em>Middle Cyclone</em> is a triumph, and what it really is, to me, is a work by an artist with a true voice. I think of Neko Case like my favorite women in rock music – PJ Harvey, Lucinda Williams, Fiona Apple, and Joni Mitchell – modern women who make great songs and great records, but really what they’ve done is reconstitute the very meaning of “great songs and great records” because their voice is so specific, unique, and definite. Now, let’s not get sidetracked by the word “voice.” Case has a singing voice that soars, most comparable to Patsy Cline. It is passionate and vivid and her music would be less of what it is were she not so gifted a singer, but I’m not talking about a singing voice, I mean a point of view, a “voice” like a fresh, specific perspective. When I hear, for example, a PJ Harvey song, I hear music that no one else in the world can make, and maybe they don’t even want to try. Case is like that.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>This can be a detriment to many listeners. I was surprised to find out that <em>Middle Cyclone</em>’s third track, “People Got a Lotta Nerve,” is already well known to Rock Band 2 players – I saw an interesting, reductive review somewhere on google; it rates the singing part as four stars since the vocals are so challenging but also featuring “kind of funny lyrics” (“I’m a man man man man man man maneater/ still you’re surprised when I eat ya”), but its conventional bass part earns it only one star. In a way I felt a little angry that Case gave her song to Rock Band 2 – stoners across the country don’t deserve the opportunity to laugh at Case, her obsession with killer whales and tornadoes. But hey, all press is good press, I suppose.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>A listener, and a music fan in particular, can get obsessed with the personality of a certain artist, can learn to love the quirks they make fun of later. I recall a coworker wanting to tell everyone about her Jill Scott cd – because she couldn’t stop listening to it, but it presented a problem listening to it on her headphones at her desk because she would start so low, and end up so loud on any given track. For the artists I love, their quirks lend themselves to so much vulnerability, I want to be strong and beat up naysayers for them. Of course, presenting that vulnerability is what makes them strong in the first place. In 2001, I saw PJ Harvey opening up for U2 at Denver’s 25,000-person-capacity stadium the Pepsi Center. She strode on stage with an electric guitar by herself and sang “Rid of Me,” whose lyrics can make a casual listener deeply uncomfortable. I know I could never stand in front of a stadium and sing “Lick my legs I’m on fire/ lick my legs of desire.” </div><div><br /><br /></div><div></div><div>In the same way, putting a song on Rock Band 2 is a bold move, and anyway, <em>Cyclone</em>’s got a lotta nerve. What an act of bravery to start an album with a track like “This Tornado Loves You,” a song you could reasonably describe as “a song about the destructive side of love.” But like the great tracks of her last two studio releases, 2002’s <em>Blacklisted</em> and 2006’s <em>Fox Confessor Brings The Flood</em>, it’s hard to even describe her songs as falling under what you might typically consider a “song.” One blog online complained that Case’s not-often-over-3-minute style here signified her “lack of interest” in her material, or her sketchy approach. This reader clearly was unaware of previous four records, when even with conventional ABAB songs rarely topped the 3 minute mark.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>But “This Tornado Loves You” is lyrically out there even by Case’s standards. “My love, I am the speed of sound/ I leave them motherless, fatherless/ their souls dangling inside-out from their mouths/ But it’s never enough/ I want you.” Youch. On my first listen, I began to resent the whole Case thing – couldn’t she just ditch the furious journal-writing session and get back to writing something pretty and instantly loveable, like “Guided By Wire” or “Furnace Room Lullaby”?<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>No, no she couldn’t, and I’m so lucky to get to fall in love with albums like <em>Cyclone</em> that push me away from what my understanding of a “great record” is; we all should question this sort of thing on occasion. I got pretty instantly obsessed with <em>Blacklisted</em> and <em>Fox Confessor Brings The Flood</em>. Look back over my writing in 2006, and one or both of these albums will come up over and over again. I think a great deal about Case, for whom, I think, her career truly started with <em>Blacklisted</em>. That album came roaring out in its banjo-heavy opening track “Things That Scare Me” with a blazing cry of “I am the dying breed that still believes/ hunted by American dreams.” It was a record of outcasts and drive, of being free to live closer to your own lunatic thoughts, and it was sealed in theme by the unconventional structure of its songs. <em>Fox Confessor</em> took that a step further, with difficulty telling its tales of people – star witnesses, widows of St. Angel, John the Baptist – facing their destiny of speaking the truth, whatever the consequences may be. The album was a surprise “Indie hit,” which means it sold close to 200,000 copies. At least that outside-the-margins thinking could reign in 200,000 people.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>I think of defining your identity, of speaking truth outside the realm of conventional social definitions is something I wrestle with constantly, of “believing” despite being hunted by American dreams. <em>Middle Cyclone</em> blazes a step further, and focuses on love, particularly the need for love that remains. The defining line is midway through the record on the title track, a simple guitar melody accented by a toy music box, and it’s without a doubt one of the most gorgeous songs of Case’s career. “I can’t give up acting tough/ it’s all that I’m made of/ Can’t scrape together quite enough/ To ride the bus to the outskirts of the face that I need love.”<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>In writing about that song, and that line in particular, the instinct arises to replace some of the lyrics with ellipses, to sand out the actual words in a purpose to make the meaning clearer. Let me please avoid doing that, because the line, with its jagged edges, is perfect. Case, in her Amazon promotional video, said she found herself writing often during the writing of this record about tornadoes. Here, the “cyclone” can’t give up acting tough, and neither can Case – she has been successful in blazing her trail outside of regular standards, but can’t do it quite enough to escape her own needs from others. There’s actually a Harvey line it reminds me of (Harvey has a lot to say on this theme, but in a very different way), in a 2007 track called “Silence”: “I freed myself freed myself and remained alone” and just before that “Somehow expect you’ll find me there/ that by some miracle you’d be aware.” Both women have made their vulnerability into strength, they’ve succeeded. Both can’t scrape together quite enough to rid themselves of that need for love.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>Where <em>Cyclone</em>’s first half is obsessed with love-as-tornado type destruction, the songs take on that same scattered logic of “This Tornado Loves You.” “Polar Nettles” and “Vengeance is Sleeping” keep the roar low and soft, obsessing over the way that love can be a brute force, and perhaps that surprises us most of all, the depths of feeling of which we’re all capable. In the middle is a rather cheeky cover of the Sparks song “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth.” In this context, that’s a threat as much as a hippie moment. On the album’s second half, Case strolls away in a couple of nightmares – “Fever” and “Prison Girls” take Case’s writing into the realm of dreams, wandering into and out of imagistic meaning.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>Yet it also, actually, contains a couple of Case’s most singable, single-ready songs, to great surprise. “I’m an Animal” seems a song that Case must have written years ago and rejected as too obvious. She sings of her own nature: “Yes, there are things I’m still so afraid of/ But my courage is roaring like the sound of the sun,” and it’s great chorus “I’m an animal, you’re an animal, too.” Her need for love and her doubt makes her the beast that she is. Perhaps earlier in the record it may have seemed obvious, but here, track 10 of 14 (15 if you count the 35 minutes at the end of the record devoted to the sound of Vermont fireflies), it’s a solid beat of strength. Earlier songs on the record spoke of love’s destructive, cyclone-like path. This is a great embrace of the destruction within.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>The other song that is unignorable, and beautifully singable on the second half is “Don’t Forget Me,” a cover of a Harry Nilsson song that Case gives her full piano orchestra treatment too. It’s not typical to hear eight (or even two) pianos on the same song, and the effect is jarring, deeply symphonic. Pianos typically cover the same ground, so more than one seems ultimately unnecessary – and here, it’s not as though each piano covers a different note (although, plenty do), but that they make each not deeper, more cavernous. There are trills of piano that continue north when a high note is reached, and plunge downward slightly enough to accent the song. I listened to the Harry Nilsson version after hearing Case’s – his version is also quite dramatic, but also emphasizes the humorous lyrics (“I’ll miss you when I’m lonely/ I’ll miss the alimony, too”), making it sounds like a song by a nebbish-y forty-something divorcee.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>Case’s version is too baritone and too orchestral, and plays right over any of the humor in the song. It also is perfect, a moment of tenderness whose instrumentation literally expands each note, like a piano player playing with 80 fingers instead of ten. Case has done this before – <em>Blacklisted</em>’s covers of Sarah Vaughan’s “Look For Me (I’ll Be Around)” and Aretha Franklin’s “Runnin’ Out Of Fools” are direct fits in the progression of those albums, and sung with such ferocity by Case, there’s no doubt she makes those songs her own. Maybe it’s because I’m Jewish, but for a couple of years I had no idea that “John Saw That Number” from <em>Fox Confessor</em> was not a Case original, just a retooling of a traditional church song, it’s such a snug evocation of that record’s themes. Her two covers here are classic Case. Like Me’shell Ndegeocello covering Jimi Hendrix’s “May This Be Love” on <em>Bitter</em> and Harvey doing “Highway ’61 Revisited” on Rid Of Me, it’s impossible to accuse the artist of co-opting someone else’s material, they’re such specific punctuations to albums already plenty specific.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>So far in writing what I’ve written here, I’ve written 2,154 words. I write a lot of words anyway. Next to the long, 1000-word treatments U2 is getting in every publication is a much shorter, usually 1 paragraph bit of praise or dismissal for <em>Middle Cyclone</em>. I hope none of these things keep people from investigating what <em>Cyclone</em> says about Case, or her career, or us, or love in the ears and thoughts of the listener. <em>Middle Cyclone</em> deserves all the words in the world.</div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-43676813120801560982009-02-16T16:13:00.000-08:002009-02-16T17:25:15.830-08:00The Oscars and Movies for 2008<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtywbTefp6NhCmWAql85eTjCvcX3xszasugjLrcNuqh8EfA2xcQGVmc5fS8QZoX655oLJY0Z4OZ1CYt6K9cwBk3drL6Kh5V1F8rWrt4493acsLHhPpZoSEnJFvxjZW9iYFVJ5x/s1600-h/slumdog.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303571222101105762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 214px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtywbTefp6NhCmWAql85eTjCvcX3xszasugjLrcNuqh8EfA2xcQGVmc5fS8QZoX655oLJY0Z4OZ1CYt6K9cwBk3drL6Kh5V1F8rWrt4493acsLHhPpZoSEnJFvxjZW9iYFVJ5x/s320/slumdog.bmp" border="0" /></a><br /><div>It's been said in the press that people don't care about the Oscars this year. I myself was surprised to find them to be less than a week from now, or maybe I was surprised that they haven't been given out already. <em>Slumdog Millionaire </em>has been said to have the "momentum" of the "pre-awards season buzz," so will likely win most of its 10 Oscar nomations. Maybe that's sapped the momentum.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>I think, though, the change in 2003 to move the Oscars up a month, and shorten the voting season by a month has made the Oscars not only duller and more predictable, but made the movie industry in and of itself even more obsessed with the things it says about it itself. Because Oscar ballots are due so shortly after the new year, people vote for the movies already winning awards, just because they're easier to catch. Worse, because of that, there's so much campaigning on each coast to try and get into those ever-important LA and NYC film circle awards that there just isn't even enough time to tell the false prophets from the good movies. This year has had many stories written about Harvey Weinstein's ability to make <em>The Reader</em> a nominee for Best Picture, and even a contender, but what remains to be seen is if anyone outside of the movie industry cares. <em>The Reader</em> still in ten weeks has made $18 million. Even the pre-awards sure-thing, <em>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button</em> turned out to be a flash in the pan whose gross depended on how many people talked about it before anyone had seen it. After having seen it, does anyone feel like they've fallen in love with a movie? I'll let you know if I hear from someone who has.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>But it wasn't a bad year for movies, not at all. Rather than rehash how "out of touch" the Academy is to have not nominated <em>Wall-E</em> or <em>The Dark Knight</em> for Best Picture, I'd like to suggest an alternative complaint: The Academy simply no longer has the time or objectivity to determine its own taste. Maybe the late March awards need to come back, just so people can figure out what the hell happened in the previous year of movies. Here are my picks for who should win the awards, based on my own taste, and perhaps some alternatives.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Best Picture</strong></div><br /><div><strong>Will Win: </strong><em>Slumdog Millionaire</em></div><br /><div><strong>Should Win: </strong><em>Milk</em></div><br /><div><strong>Who's Missing? </strong><em>Elegy, The Wrestler, The Dark Knight, Wall-E, Happy-Go-Lucky</em></div><br /><div>Like each of the recent years, this Best Picture category was mostly picked a long time ago, and when the nominations were announced, it felt fairly underwhelming. I think if nominations were announced in mid February, like they were before 5 years ago, <em>The Wrestler</em> would have really benefited from the popularity it built as an art-house favorite. In any case, I'd still likely pick <em>Milk</em> as the superior picture of the year - the rousing, specific biopic of Harvey Milk that stuns you with the human attachment you build beneath all of its politics. Now, friends have pointed out to me - rightly, I think - that a conventional biopic really shouldn't stand as any Movie of the Year, and I do think a couple of movies were better (namely, <em>Elegy</em> and <em>The Wrestler</em>), but <em>Milk</em> is the type of biopic I can see myself turning to if I need a good weeper, or to just see a spectacular performance. Of the remaining nominees, I'll admit I haven't seen <em>The Reader</em> and feel it's too much of an assignment to sit through, despite my love for Kate Winslet. <em>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, </em>I'm fairly certain, is terrible - it's Old Man does <em>Forrest Gump</em>, before it's a completely unconvincing love story (wait, and a, um, statement on Hurricane Katrina), and <em>Frost/Nixon</em> is sort of interesting history leading up to one fairly excellent scene, not a good full movie. <em></em>I like <em>Slumdog Millionaire, </em>but as a longtime Danny Boyle fan, I must say I missed the passion and thrill I felt in <em>Trainspotting </em>and <em>Millions</em> or even <em>28 Days Later.</em></div><br /><div><em></em></div><br /><div><strong>Best Director</strong></div><br /><div><strong>Will and Should Win: </strong>Danny Boyle <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em></div><br /><div><strong>Who's Missing? </strong>Christopher Nolan <em>The Dark Knight, </em>Jonathan Demme <em>Rachel Getting Married, </em>Mike Leigh <em>Happy-Go-Lucky</em></div><br /><div>I may have missed the passion and thrill of his earlier movies, but what Boyle proves in <em>Slumdog</em> is the same thing that he proved in some of his other just-good movies, like <em>Sunshine </em>and <em>28 Days Later</em>, that the movie is just lucky to find him. So stylized and intense, Boyle knows just how to make a movie look, knows just the right buttons to push. It's easy to remember the scene of poor Latika in the rain outside of the train car, of young Jamal plunging into a pile of poo to meet a famous actor, or that astonishing overhead shots of Jamal and Salim running through the slums of Mumbai. For individual scenes, Boyle deserves the recognition as one of the greatest talents in the world. Did he bring the authority of some other great directors this year? No, despite vision, I didn't find the same control that Nolan or Demme or Leigh brought to their better movies - but they had better material.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Best Actor</strong></div><br /><div><strong>Will Win: </strong>Mickey Rourke <em>The Wrestler</em></div><br /><div><strong>Should Win: </strong>Rourke, or Sean Penn in <em>Milk</em></div><br /><div><strong>Who's Missing? </strong>Christian Bale <em>The Dark Knight, </em>Ben Kingsley <em>Elegy, </em>James Franco <em>Pineapple Express</em></div><br /><div>My "Who's Missing" here is relatively nitpicky, which is why I can't quite bring myself to pick a winner here either. Does it really matter if Rourke or Penn wins? How lucky are we to get two performances this astonishing in a year? I suppose my gut really goes with Rourke, who's fearless, physical, and so wounded in <em>The Wrestler</em>, a movie that is so much more than a performance piece because it's such a <em>great</em> performance piece - because Rourke inhabits the role and reveals a life. Lucky for us, so does Penn in <em>Milk, </em>and these are clearly the two finest male performances this year.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Best Actress</strong></div><br /><div><strong>Will Win: </strong>Kate Winslet <em>The Reader</em></div><br /><div><strong>Should Win: </strong>Meryl Streep <em>Doubt</em></div><br /><div><strong>Who's Missing? </strong>Penelope Cruz <em>Elegy</em>, Sally Hawkins <em>Happy-Go-Lucky</em></div><br /><div>I do, very much, believe that Cruz gave the performance of the year in <em>Elegy, </em>but in a year that half the people saw that movie that had seen the already-not-seen-by-many <em>Vicky Cristina Barcelona</em>, I'm more than happy to see her walk away with Best Supporting Actress, which she deserves. Too bad she deserves to win both categories, which is what people once thought Winslet would do if <em>The Reader</em> had been considered eligible for Best Supporting Actress. I do think that Winslet is one of the greatest actresses in the world, but without seeing <em>The Reader</em>, I think that this win is a product of sympathy and marketing - I'd much rather retroactively give her the Oscar for <em>Little Children</em> or <em>Sense and Sensibility. </em>There were two astonishingly vivid, challenging performances this year - this seems to be the thing to do to get Oscar nominations, and it's a trick I'm happy to fall for over and over again - in Anne Hathaway's <em>Rachel Getting Married</em> work and Melissa Leo in <em>Frozen River</em>. Both are so extraordinary, and so deserving. My heart is too, in some way, with Leo, who I fell in love with watching <em>Homicide</em> in the mid-90's, seeing those searing eyes poking out from that fiery mane of hair. But Streep in <em>Doubt</em> made me feel the impossible - a world of sympathy and understanding for a world of order and "certainty" that is Streep's battered core in <em>Doubt</em>. I never expected to be so moved and fascinated by the performance, but that is perhaps why the greatness of Streep has become so expected as to be forgettable - a mistake if I ever heard one.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Best Supporting Actor</strong></div><br /><div><strong>Will and Should Win: </strong>Heath Ledger <em>The Dark Knight</em></div><br /><div><strong>Who's Missing: </strong>Eddie Marsan <em>Happy-Go-Lucky, </em>James Franco <em>Milk, </em>Richard Dreyfuss <em>W.</em></div><br /><div>Some of the Oscar haters this year have said they don't think the Academy would "recognize a comic book performance" if Ledger had still been alive, a way to critique the Academy's tastes while agreeing with them. I think that even had Ledger lived, he'd be the front-runner for this award, and he'd win. His Joker is a sort of instant icon, so immediate and unignorable from the moment he speaks - even before he walks on! - that it would have been too much to ignore, much like Daniel Day Lewis in <em>There Will Be Blood</em> last year, or Helen Mirren in <em>The Queen. </em>The performances have become, in our everything-is-analyzed-immeidately culture, part of our contemporary understanding of the current state of movie-making. Add to that that I can barely even muster goodwill for the other four - Josh Brolin in <em>Milk</em>? James Franco was that movie's breakout performance, for his quiet, unshakable chemistry with Sean Penn; Brolin was serviceable, and got consolation votes for those not voting for his work in <em>W. </em>Robert Downey Jr. in <em>Tropic Thunder</em>? Obnoxious. Phillip Seymour Hoffman in <em>Doubt? </em>Serviceable, but for Hoffman, it's work he could do in his sleep; it never made me feel his conflicts with Meryl Streep were battles of equals. And as for Michael Shannon in <em>Revolutionary Road, </em>Shannon is a terrific actor (see him seethe in 2007's <em>Bug</em>), his performance revealed the movie's unswallowably self-serving pessimism; his crazy-man-who-speaks-the-truth didn't have much of a life of his own except to propel Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio into arguments about "the truth" of things. To me, it was the lie of things, and a nasty one.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Best Supporting Actress</strong></div><br /><div><strong>Will and Should Win: </strong>Penelope Cruz <em>Vicky Cristina Barcelona</em></div><br /><div><strong>Who's Missing? </strong>Nursel Köse <em>The Edge of Heaven</em>, Nürgel Yesilcay <em>The Edge of Heaven</em>, Ari Graynor <em>Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist</em></div><br /><div>This one's a no-brainer. Cruz pops in halfway into <em>Vicky Cristina</em> and isn't just a jolt to the movie, she's the core of its sex-and-love-caldron hippie idealism - and better, she coaxes you right into her unstable arms. This is the role that allowed Cruz, like nothing since <em>Blow</em>, indulge the heights of her vulnerability and sexiness, allowed her to give in to all of her wildness. And, since she wasn't nominated for that even-better performance in <em>Elegy</em> that also showed that spark coming to life, she just deserves this. Of the other nominees, I think both Amy Adams (for <em>Doubt</em>) and Taraji P. Henson (for <em>Benjamin Button</em>) are extremely talented, but their performances are nothing special. Marisa Tomei is the conflicted heart of the real world in <em>The Wrestler</em>, and I'm happy she's getting some of the respect she's deserved all along for her great work here. And Viola Davis is certainly a spoiler here - a ten-minute tete-a-tete with Meryl Streep that proves her a sad, wise equal, which is about as great of a compliment as anyone deserves. I'd love those performances to be side by side with the hilarious drunkard Ari Graynor in <em>Nick and Norah</em> (that gum in the toilet scene!), or either of the mother-daughter team in <em>The Edge of Heaven </em>of Köse and Yesilcay that connects us with that movies globetrotting loose threads. Critics centerd on <em>The Edge of Heaven</em> this year because of Hanna Schygullah, a German legend from Fassbinder's old 70's films, but hers, wonderful as she is, doesn't have the emotional ease and truth of those two central performances - Köse, who is scarred but shows the same temerity and anger that comes out in Yesilcay's enraged protestor.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Best Original Screenplay:</strong><br /><strong>Will Win: </strong><em>Milk</em></div><br /><div><strong>Should Win: </strong><em>Wall-E</em></div><br /><div>In a surprising category, I'm moved enough by the cleverness of the <em>Wall-E</em> Earth to beat great indie writing in <em>Frozen River</em> and <em>Happy-Go-Lucky</em>, and the smart politics of <em>Milk</em>. Also nominated is the forgotten January 2008 release <em>In Bruges</em>, what a shock, eh?</div><br /><div><strong>Who's Missing?<em> </em></strong><em>Rachel Getting Married</em>, <em>Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist</em></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Best Adapted Screenplay:</strong></div><br /><div><strong>Will Win: </strong><em>Slumdog Millionaire</em></div><br /><div><strong>Should Win: </strong><em>Doubt</em></div><br /><div>John Patrick Shanley had perhaps the easiest job of all the nominees - to make an already pretty cinematic stage play slightly wider and make it work for great actors. Still, the only nominee that isn't nominated for Best Picture, <em>Doubt</em> is the briskest and most interesting on the page of any of the nominees, tantalizing in its mysterious clues to something that doesn't connect because all it should make us do is doubt, but with the certainty that an answer lurks somewhere.</div><br /><div><strong>Who's Missing?<em> </em></strong><em>Elegy</em> and <em>The Dark Knight</em>, of course!</div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-32516478224286809452009-02-11T16:12:00.000-08:002009-03-15T19:08:16.098-07:00Conversations With Dead People<div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ZFJYfRzZP1QHU3U9Dd__nNhyphenhyphenfpujQRzeT3Vln3OGNGi4irybFvVQISyESUn-nrn0WkwDxWCxt2jbyztB-2oko5911ytEzRX5DBUo-PPW6Ro-4SjJR5UazWtejF0kEX4F8ZXy/s1600-h/buffy+-+conversations.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313600650000441570" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 218px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ZFJYfRzZP1QHU3U9Dd__nNhyphenhyphenfpujQRzeT3Vln3OGNGi4irybFvVQISyESUn-nrn0WkwDxWCxt2jbyztB-2oko5911ytEzRX5DBUo-PPW6Ro-4SjJR5UazWtejF0kEX4F8ZXy/s320/buffy+-+conversations.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div>It's a long forgotten argument, but it's one that I've been thinking of lately and I just can't let drop. The argument? <em>Buffy The Vampire Slayer</em> "let down its viewers" in its last two, more adult, "darker" seasons. This is wrong, but more importantly, the fact that it still rattles me is something I need to discuss.</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>Time has gone by - <em>Buffy</em> ended its 7 season run in May of 2003 with "Chosen," an episode that accomplished the rare feat of bringing me to tears during even its fight scenes - potential slayers working together to conquer evil tugged at the heart strings, who knew? Yet today, as a news item on Salon.com was discussing <em>Buffy</em> creator Joss Whedon's new series <em>Dollhouse</em> (starring buxom <em>Buffy</em> alum Eliza Dushku), links were listed to synopses of <em>Buffy'</em>s season 7 and season 6 finales, and Salon's sometimes-gushing, sometimes-puzzling analysis of it. I guess it had been a number of years since anyone had mentioned <em>Buffy</em> in print, thus these two articles were the most recently linked related articles.</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>I've been thinking a lot of <em>Buffy</em> lately, and I mean all of <em>Buffy</em>. A month or two ago, I watched their seminal 1997 season 2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF238lF-4rN-150ROalf5XOlHcGLu0oAJfH-2ABcPDkS6jHpV7ALEbQWKEjuHOpTONMgWvNbhNqOyXelWlnvZsYw5NorPcqpe-UZUCDivF5QOet7fJrSJK6OGJpKR2cMNHu5XO/s1600-h/buffy+-+innocent.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313600652248674962" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF238lF-4rN-150ROalf5XOlHcGLu0oAJfH-2ABcPDkS6jHpV7ALEbQWKEjuHOpTONMgWvNbhNqOyXelWlnvZsYw5NorPcqpe-UZUCDivF5QOet7fJrSJK6OGJpKR2cMNHu5XO/s320/buffy+-+innocent.jpg" border="0" /></a> 2-part episodes "Surprise" and "Innocence," two episodes that really transformed the series into the cult it became. In it, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) turned 17, faced an apocalypse and responded by having sex with her vampire true love, Angel (David Boreanaz), accidentally making him evil in the process and losing him forever. On this risky 2-parter, after which nothing in the series remains the same, a franchise was launched - Buffy and Angel were never to truly get back together, leading to the ability to create <em>Angel, </em>and the ability to keep that show's entire 5-year run stocked with shelves and shelves of romantic anguish. I watched the episode because of the show's heartwrenching final exchange between Buffy and her mother, Joyce (Kristine Sutherland):</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div><em>Joyce: So what did you do for your birthday?</em></div><br /><div><em>Buffy: (with a pause) I got older.</em></div><br /><div><em>Joyce: You look the same to me.</em></div><br /><div><em></em></div><br /><br /><div>Joss Whedon commented in today's article on "Dollhouse" about how surprised he had been that internet culture allowed head writers and creators or shows to become celebrities in their own right. Really, it was dialogue like that - simple, cutting, powerful. I went and watched a separate <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijpfi9LmwdHcuclztylzBzNWbGil4ZRYHIiOV3AFUU-V1FC1lPYVIveSD8XUTycu-jmcLkKHI6iculDR8RbxQC5SbyEJzLwigz4ERPlmK9H1cczZXeH1e2pl7ksG_dSk3PLLgL/s1600-h/buffy+grad+day.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313600647679732402" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijpfi9LmwdHcuclztylzBzNWbGil4ZRYHIiOV3AFUU-V1FC1lPYVIveSD8XUTycu-jmcLkKHI6iculDR8RbxQC5SbyEJzLwigz4ERPlmK9H1cczZXeH1e2pl7ksG_dSk3PLLgL/s320/buffy+grad+day.jpg" border="0" /></a>Whedon-penned episode a few days later, their famous season 3 finale "Graduation Day." I wanted to see the ferocious fight scene between Buffy and "bad" slayer Faith (Dushku) that involved leather pants and handcuffs. Even more, I wanted to see the elliptical dream sequence that followed it, in which a comatose Buffy and Faith share an untennable moment of bonding. These were risks, like the season 4 all-dream episode "Restless," that people remained behind, even as Whedon challenged his viewers. Yet when season 6 came along, people stopped answering the challenges. They knew their <em>Buffy</em>, and that wasn't it.</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>Buffy and <em>Buffy</em> have been such a part of my life. As season 6 began, it was 2001, and I was a college sophomore, doubting my life and wondering what I was doing in college. The season began with Buffy returning from the dead and contemplating a malaise that she had never anticipated. The subject of the season, truly, was constituting life after the end of certainty - it was about learning how to live with confusion. That season was, I thought rather undeniably, exciting and well plotted. In its end, Buffy regains a certainty of some kind and comes back in season 7, their final year, as a leader. It was in this season that the fans <em>really</em> started to hate the season, calling Buffy "a total bitch" and complaining about everything - the villain that talked too much, Buffy giving inspirational speeches, a crew of Slayers-in-training that "mostly whined," and a rush of too many series-long topics not given the forefront they deserve.</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>These are the arguments I take most issue with, and it's because I can't forget about them. I don't necessarily care that people didn't like seasons 6 and 7 of <em>Buffy</em> because I have them. I can go back and rewatch their legendary "Once More With Feeling" musical episode and feel the same stir I always felt. These arguments to me just show a lack of understanding not only about what made <em>Buffy</em> such an incredible experience, but of a lack of willingness to appreciate entertainment that asks <em>anything</em> of its audience. In my mind, it doesn't matter that <em>Buffy</em> reached a point in its run in which it could no longer resembled what it was before - that to me was so much the point of using the television medium, of allowing a story to actually take place across time, as only a work that played out over 7 actual years could truly do. </div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>It also just points to TV audiences inundated with too much modernity, too much ability to whine, too much familiarity with having influence over the production of a TV show. This is probably something that makes a certain marketplace sense - an audience for a TV show, in effect, gets to be its "boss," since TV shows are just a product, a means to satisfy advertisers that you'll stick around through commercial breaks. Therefore, if an audience is unhappy with the product they are seeing, they, via blogs and letter writing and simply changing the channel, have the capacity to demand a different show. This happens - I can recall stories about <em>The OC </em>and <em>24</em> and <em>Grey's Anatomy</em> and <em>Lost</em> changing directions of plot lines mid-season in response to terrible audience reaction.</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>But I suppose terrible audience reaction is the problem - if you're a writer with a "voice," shouldn't this be the exact thing you should avoid? This is rather hard to enforce, considering how inundated television is with terrible writing (I've given up on far more shows than the few I've watched until the series' conclusions). But for a show that had the voice of <em>Buffy</em>, it's difficult to not find people taking the same territorial control as an affront to quality. Much as I complained about the whining regarding <em>The Wire</em> and <em>The Sopranos'</em> final seasons, I couldn't help but want to shut the whiners up - since most, anyway, were coming up wtih complaints in order to have some sort of relevance. I always fear that a gifted writer would hear so much complaining, consider it too valid, and collapse the trajectory of their show and their work - leading to both the next clear criticism by whiners, that a show has "lost its direction."</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>Thankfully, Joss Whedon was never one to cave to too much pressure. I remember reading about "The Body," the famous <em>Buffy</em> season 5 episode without any background music. Whedon included a kiss, out of panic and solace, between its two lesbian characters Willow and Tara (Allyson Hannigan and Amber Benson). The two had never kissed on screen before, although we knew they were lovers. The WB took issue with the kiss - it was rather long, in an ep<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAe8Pfr-w_SDQYubxYR-Pdb3C_CaFQZx2yM_axuqy-5tytwonfXMgtWu4rGbP_8gM9k8OARx8DLB-qXq3YKXF6kBSU5shWEEhTmJ4M0aQXedC75mM6iH5T6q5GBXhhMKMLJQmC/s1600-h/buffy+-+kiss.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313600650630599698" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 299px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 311px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAe8Pfr-w_SDQYubxYR-Pdb3C_CaFQZx2yM_axuqy-5tytwonfXMgtWu4rGbP_8gM9k8OARx8DLB-qXq3YKXF6kBSU5shWEEhTmJ4M0aQXedC75mM6iH5T6q5GBXhhMKMLJQmC/s320/buffy+-+kiss.jpg" border="0" /></a>isode that was supposedly focused on the death of Buffy's mother - and Whedon told them simply, it was "not negotiable." Looking at that landmark episode objectively, the episode would have been plenty powerful without the kiss, and there's one line in that great scene that I just don't buy at all (Willow says to Tara about her need to wear a blue sweater, "Joyce loved it so!" No one says "so"). But this was the mark of someone who did not compromise his vision. Because of the inclusion of that scene, Willow and Tara seemed to make out in virtually every season 6 episode, and <em>Buffy</em> even included a lesbian sex scene towards the end of season 7 that was just as graphic as its hetero counterparts.</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>In season 6, though, one of the haters was one Whedon couldn't shut up - Sarah Michelle Gellar, who described the season as "missing Buffy's spirit." In a way, Buffy is a hero of mine - somoene with power and knowledge, and the clarity to know when she's in the right and when she's not needed. It saddens me that Gellar didn't see Buffy's own battles with confusion and uncertainty as an essential part of that knowledge. Buffy has one line in the season 7 episode "Conversations With Dead People" in which she explains, with vivid clarity, the true tenor of her confusion:</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div><em>"I feel like I'm worse than anyone. Honestly, I'm beneath them. My friends, my boyfriends. I feel like I'm not worthy of their love. 'Cause even though they love me, it doesn't mean anything 'cause their opinions don't matter. They don't know. They haven't been through what I've been through. They're not the slayer. I am. Sometimes I feel—(sighs) this is awful—I feel like I'm better than them. Superior."</em></div><br /><div><em></em></div><br /><br /><div>The vampire she's speaking with tells her, "You do have a superiority complex - and you have an inferiority complex about it."</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>In reading about season 7, some writers of the staff felt that Joss Whedon was writing the thinly veiled Joss Whedon story - a leader with "vision" (over his writing staff) who was aware of the direction he wanted his season to move in, and a gifted group of underling writers, many of whom were his close friends, that he distanced himself from in his decision making. That only makes the season more profound to me, in looking back on it. </div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>A PJ Harvey line I also identify with: "I freed myself from family, freed myself from work, freed myself, freed myself, and remained alone."</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>What am I speaking of exactly that I see reflected in the last two years of Buffy? An understanding of certainty, the role uncertainty plays in it, the way that certainty of who you are and what you do can make you whole, but can also make you separate from those around you, even those you love. I see so much said about how we live in these two astonishing years of television. And perhaps that means when I read of these arguments about what <em>Buffy</em> did "wrong" in those last couple of years, I hear an argument not against the show, but against how human beings are in general, a lack of understanding, and a getting-in-the-way. I hope I hear others returning to those final two years with a bit of growth and humility at some point.</div></div></div></div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-39132677374079096502009-01-23T17:08:00.000-08:002009-01-23T17:16:59.544-08:00Experiments: Letters to my Father - Sidewalks of the CityLetters to my Father.<br /><br />Part 1. Sidewalks of the City<br /><br />Someday if you go, I wont’ be able to hear this song. Not in the same way. I came to love her all on my own, Lucinda Williams, at a different time and place from you. In 1997, we had that thin black radio with half an antenna broken off and the battery tray long missing. You’d come home at lunch and make a hotdog in beans or drowned in Spaghetti-O’s and go for a run. You’d only eat your oatmeal with hot milk, which you’d boil in a small saucepan, and leave it out on the counter the rest of the day, a soft white glaze on the surface of the metal. You’d listen to KBCO on the radio, and that was where I first heard her, at the time that <em>Car Wheels On A Gravel Road</em> became famous. I didn’t like it. I thought “Can’t Let Go,” the single that played on the progressive, KBCO-like hippie rock stations sounded like Bonnie Raitt, it was too “country” for me, at the time, who loved the trends of the day, ska and electronica (remember that one? Of course you don’t). And you agreed that you didn’t like the song – you liked her when she was more country. When you and mom would play “Passionate Kisses” by her and by Mary Chapin Carpenter, but it was her song. Even after I fell in love with Lucinda Williams, I didn’t start loving that song until now. What I’ve fallen in love with on Lucinda’s first two records, over time, is how happy she sounds, how in love with the world, how excited by life. Her records of aging have been extraordinary, but I’m so happy she had that excitement recorded.<br /><br />Like this, I’m not talking about you, or maybe I am tangentially. Did we share an understanding over that time? We’ve had arguments since then, about <em>Car Wheels on a Gravel Road</em>, which I’d eventually believe was one of the greatest records of the 90’s, after I liked country a little more, and admired Williams for her conceptual wonder. I loved <em>World Without Tears</em> just as much, and that was actually my first record of hers. Still, <em>Sweet Old World</em> won’t leave me. I love it too much. Maybe from an artistic perspective, I can still argue that Car Wheels and <em>World Without Tears</em> are better albums, but what’s the point? <em>Sweet Old World</em> is like a great friend that I’ve had now for 7 or 8 years. Longer for you. You knew her when it came out, in 1992. You’d already made “Passionate Kisses” overplayed in the house. You could tell me that “Side of the Road” is the stuff of great songwriting, that it made her career.<br /><br />It did, you’re right. You’re wrong, like you have been so many times, that it stopped when she moved away from country. The truth is you’re a purist, and not just in music, or in movies, or in art, or in writing, and I don’t even mean it as a compliment, although, perhaps I’ll tell you someday, that gave me taste. I have taste, Dad, I have the ability to parse through details, to have opinions, and it’s because of that, you’re purism, you’re ridiculous ridiculous purism. No, <em>Essence</em> and <em>World Without Tears</em> aren’t country, but they’re wonderful. They’re not as happy, but they are about something else we experience, loneliness and desire. The feeling that other people lift us into life and then push us away, because of a coldness in our souls. I love this theme, I love it expressed because people don’t say these things to each other. <em>World Without Tears</em> has a great song called “Atonement” that I’m sure you’d hate if you knew what it was. It’s all loud guitars and atonal singing, a yell, a fight. I love music that’s loud and atonal as much as I love the country that’s sweet and melodious that she used to sing. The truth is, I learned to appreciate, to find the good.<br /><br />And you stayed pure. You wore it like your religion, the pure. Dylan you were willing to grow with, Van Morrison too, to let them get away with whatever they were working on at the time. You even defended <em>Planet Waves</em> and <em>Infidels</em>. Not anyone else. Not anything else. I wanted to explain to you after the surgery, after the last bout of radiation that left you so miserable, to love what you had, because that could leave you too. You wanted to run faster and longer. You wanted to feel like you felt before the cancer, before the last year put you so constantly at sanity’s back door. I cannot say that I would not be faced with the same grimness, I did not lose the things you lost, felt the way you felt. I would be miserable too, I know, and I also know that when you were at your worst, I couldn’t help thinking that I would not react the same way. I have forced myself, my whole life, to find the positive, to fixate on it. Some – Josh, you – would say I was being deluded. I do not think so.<br /><br />Another thing I got from you: Taoism. Sorta. At least, I know that through you I got supported to look into it. Taoism, I’m sad to find, has so much of its thoughts locked up in detachment and dismissal of all that is great in the world. I took it as the opposite – to find love and warmth in the worst of moments. To see what great sadness can offer us, to find the hope when all is bleak. I do not think this is a bad thing. I want kids so I can teach them to see the world like this. But perhaps they’d need a consciousness that’s as haunted as yours to get to the place I got. Because yours in the consciousness that formed in me.<br /><br />Sidewalks of the city. You’d look back on that record, on <em>Sweet Old World</em>, and it would be the song you’d remember, though you remembered that she’d written a song, “Little Angel, Little Brother,” about her brother’s suicide. You remembered he was a poet. So was her father. You remembered she did a beautiful cover of Nick Drake’s “Which Will” that she recorded in one take at 2 in the morning. You thought “He Never Got Enough Love” was a pretty great song for a defense attorney, maybe you’d break it out in trial. <br /><br />“Sidewalks of the City” is a song that should evoke my viewpoint on life. It’s a song of sad, uncertain observations – a man with hunger in his face, crumbling buildings and graffiti. Women sleeping in doorways. “Somehow you just don’t feel right,” she says compendiously. Yet is this a song of fear, of uncertainty? Not really. What a grand chorus – “Hold me, baby, give me some faith. Let me know you’re there, let me touch your face. Give me love, give me grace. Tell me good things, tell me that my world is safe.” The fiddles swell, the guitar cascades in scales, the drums come in. Dr. John plays bass. I’m amazed you never told me that – he was, after all, a friend of The Band’s, and you love to point out any friends of the Band, anyone who’s ever mentioned The Band, anyone who ever held a Band album in their hand, even for a second. Some day, actually, Lucinda Williams would write for <em>Rolling Stone</em>’s issue on the greatest rock artists a tribute to The Band. Still, you don’t give her a ton of credit past 1992. Purist.<br /><br />This song is so pure. That fiddle is so beautiful. This is not lyrically a warm song, it’s the grandeur of the chorus, the sweet rise of her voice, that high, wise fiddle that makes the song warm. I may have never been willing to acknowledge it, but it’s one of Williams’ most perfect songs. Like “Side of the Road” and “Jackson” and “I Lost It.” I played one for you from <em>World Without Tears</em> you actually liked – “Fruits of My Labor,” another one of great, wounding simplicity that breaks hearts. Actually we saw her perform it, at the Boulder Theater. You leaned over to me and said, “She’s got a great voice, doesn’t she?” It makes sense you’d love this song, it’s a pure soul number. I love it when Lucinda gets experimental, but you only like the experiments that wind up in determined genres. At least you’re consistent.<br /><br />Your taste is what made me. In the same way it limits you to not see the greatness in the world, it allowed me to pick it out when I saw it, to be a man of taste, to discern. You talked to me in college when I was reading <em>The Sun Also Rises</em> about Jake’s rituals – the way he shaved, the order and exactitude with which he admired bullfighters. This was what it meant to be lost, you said, to take comfort in the patterns and rituals that help you organize the world, to admire the things that made exact sense. I suppose I sought the opposite, disorder, and acknowledged disorder was best when it went down with a spoonful of order. Like Sonic Youth or “Atonement” or Joni Mitchell’s Mingus, there are elements of pop, of structure, of wisdom there, and I learned to love what took me a while to get to know. You, I think, sought beauty and expression, but needed to see it right away. You found hope in <em>Before Night Falls</em>, which you made me see a second time – this poor, persecuted, gay Cuban writer, whose life was one big kick in the pants, as life is for many, but he found his soul through writing, through expression. It’s the same reason you loved <em>Look Homeward, Angel</em> and <em>Go Tell It On The Mountain</em>. This was your pet theme, people who learned to express through the indignities of life. Beauty that rose from ugliness.<br /><br />The purist, always. “Sidewalks of the City” is the rose that grows out of the concrete where it lies. Tell me good things, tell me that my world is safe.Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-10941736828560031832009-01-15T10:21:00.001-08:002009-01-15T10:44:42.634-08:00A letter to Ryan Adams, who announced his retirement on his blog this week<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin7G1B6NJ0zetekPpg9mPvhS96MAbELh8B2YbI_2QfKiuv32SiKE5o9zASuXC0P9HVINyBdUSBlMVDZV3Ca08Y80E6offJwJlVx-mJwy4o7Tcu9XQ_UYLJ6_X2Cn8CKRqWklao/s1600-h/RyanAdams_MaywoodStation062.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291588956047676562" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin7G1B6NJ0zetekPpg9mPvhS96MAbELh8B2YbI_2QfKiuv32SiKE5o9zASuXC0P9HVINyBdUSBlMVDZV3Ca08Y80E6offJwJlVx-mJwy4o7Tcu9XQ_UYLJ6_X2Cn8CKRqWklao/s320/RyanAdams_MaywoodStation062.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em><span style="font-size:78%;">Ryan Adams announced his retirement on his Cardinals blog earlier this week. He's since taken it down, but not before I could write the following letter. It was, however, before I could figure out how to send it to him.</span></em></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Dear Ryan,<br /><br />A friend who works for Jambase forwarded me the link to your blog saying that you’d like to retire from music. In it, you spoke of the pressures of being on the road, of health that needed attention, of fans and journalists speculating on your behavior and calling you an asshole for things you said. You spoke of someone you loved that you’ve lost, and of appreciating the day to day things that a life on the road never allowed to appreciate.<br /></div><br /><div>I’ve looked at your website exactly one time in my life, to find the set list for the one show of yours I was able to go to, at the Paramount Theater in Seattle in late January 2008. Because of this, I’ve never seen any of your comments you’ve made on your blog, not about your loss, for which I don’t know what you’re referring to, but I’m also very sorry; loss is difficult. I don’t know what you’ve written that’s been taken out of context, and I don’t know why you’re labeled an asshole, although I admit that stories of you freaking out on stage are sometimes kinda funny, and only illustrate the things I love about you, and maybe musicians in general. I mean, if those of us that are fans of musicians are allowing our pain and uncertainties be sublimated into music, it only makes sense that the people that create that sublimation would sometimes act out of pain and uncertainty. They speak to the irrationality that we’re not all that good at expressing.<br /></div><br /><div>But back to the one time I went to your website, to find that set list. That concert is still the only concert I’ve been to in my life, by anyone, that started on time. My friends and I arrived at 8:05 p.m. and already found you midway through your first song – which apparently was “Bartering Lines,” although I didn’t see it. We were quickly ushered to our seats as you segued seamlessly into “Peaceful Valley.” I see that you perform “Peaceful Valley” quite often, but I didn’t know how you’d morphed the violins into guitars when performing it live. Nothing had ever sounded like this in all of your songs – with the guitars so expressive, loud, and mournful. Your voice was always plenty expressive in that song’s silent bout of “Trying to find a peaceful song/ to sing when everything goes wrong,” but in harmony with the Cardinals, it was also sweet, soothing, and entirely complementary of the new guitar part. “Peaceful Valley” was already my favorite song on <em>Jacksonville City Nights</em>– a tall order, but more on that later – but this was incredible. Segueing into “Mockingbirdsing,” also, it was a great comfort – you sang “Mockingbirdsing” in your highest register, and the “Don’t give up on love” climax was more sweet and emphatic than usual. In a way, the thought hadn’t occurred to me – not giving up on love. I guess I’m not in love now, I have no relationship to speak of, and when I was in love before, it didn’t really last. It’s nice to know I should hold out for a little bit more.<br /></div><br /><div>I’m a big fan of yours, but not enough to follow the blogs, the media interpretation of the blogs (yawn), the every tribulation of rumor that following someone online entails. I haven’t seen you enough (I haven’t seen you twice, for that matter) to say, as one fan did of the show you did, that the version of “Cold Roses” you performed lacked passion. I don’t know how it would be possible to reach that conclusion, but more importantly, what a dumb, snobby thing to say – and what a revocation of the gift that is that song. “Cold Roses” is brilliant, brilliant. What a song, what a guitar part, what a harmony. I don’t think you’re capable of singing it without passion, and I don’t know what that would sound like. I think it’s nuts to imply that any and every appearance of that song everywhere is not a gift to people who love music. I’m thankful for that song, as I am of so many of your great songs, and I will likely put it on in my car when I decide to stop writing this and leave my office to go get lunch.<br /></div><br /><div>Let me explain how I became a fan of you, and what your music means to me. I’m not going to say some things that get said that I find untrue – your music did not help me through the darkest parts of my life. I’m not your #1 fan. I haven’t followed every word you’ve written. I don’t even own <em>Demolition</em>. </div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div> </div><div> </div><div>I was in a coffee shop, sometime in early 2005, when someone played “Let It Ride.” I went home and downloaded it illegally (sorry. But you’ve gotten plenty of my money since then). I couldn’t get enough of it – what a song! It’s still, I think, your most perfect song, full of energy and excitement. When I downloaded it, I couldn’t seem to find a version that started from the beginning, with the full guitar flourish with which it begins. So, I paid to download the song. I loved it so much, I figured there had to be more songs from <em>Cold Roses</em> I would like, so I downloaded “Friends” and “If I Am A Stranger.” I got laid to “Friends” once, and it seemed to put in context to me all the sweetness and warmth of that song. The truth was, though I’d always avoided listening to you (I mean, so many albums, so much effort to get to know them), you could create a brilliant song, you had a gift – a song that, like all great songs, could make concise and clear a simple emotion, and make you return, melodically, to it over and over in your head. Songs that affected your thoughts and ideas and your heart and your mind.<br /></div><br /><div>Still, I resisted buying an album. Then, my father saw you on Letterman, which he always watches, playing “Come Pick Me Up.” He told me I’d love the song. I downloaded that one, too. It immediately became one of my most played songs on my iPod. I picked up and moved to Seattle (unrelated to you, sorry), and decided the first album I needed to buy was <em>Cold Roses</em>. Though I didn’t love it immediately, I fell in love with it one song at a time, realizing each one’s perfection. I realized, actually, there wasn’t a bad song on it. Then I bought <em>Rock And Roll</em> after downloading “So Alive.” I realized there actually wasn’t a bad song on there either. Then, by then, to <em>Easy Tiger</em>, which I bought the day it came out. Then to <em>Jacksonville City Nights.</em><br /></div><br /><div>I’d like to send you, someday, the 6 page essay I decided to write on <em>Jacksonville City Nights</em>, which I would actually include in a list of the most influential albums of my life. What a brave, weird, confused, varied, unique record. There is much I want to say about it, except that I identified with its frayed nerves and broken-glass pianos. I wanted to cry at the harmonies in “Dear John.” I’d listen to “Don’t Fail Me Now” when it was cold and feel understood. I’d loved “A Kiss Before I Go” nearly as much as “Let It Ride” and sang like an asshole to the harmonies in “Withering Heights” as loud as I could in my car. And then there was “Peaceful Valley,” the most frayed, and yet the most hopeful of all of the songs on the record – is it a song that seeks death as solace, or is it something that creates what it’s looking for, a peaceful song to sing when everything goes wrong? I didn’t quite feel, as crazy as I felt at the time, that everything had gone wrong for me, but I did feel like the song protected me some, blanketed me from forces driving me on to seek a peaceful valley somewhere.<br /></div><br /><div>My dad, who loved you on Letterman, went out and bought <em>29</em>, an album he didn’t care for, so I stole his copy, and I made him copies of <em>Cold Roses</em> and <em>Jacksonville City Nights</em>, which he loved. Luckily, I loved <em>29</em> enough for the both of us. I’ve written extensively about that record too, which I see as a primer on survival. “Most of my friends are married and making them babies. To most of them I’ve already died.” Sometimes I look back on life and I marvel at my ability to stay alive, to look back at my dead dog’s pile of bones and be shocked that they represent the passage of time, that time has passed at all. “Strawberry Wine,” though “imperfect,” I guess, in a way that “Let It Ride” or “A Kiss Before I Go” are not, might be my favorite of all of your songs – I love how your voice trembles in the “Don’t spend too much time on the other side/ let the daylight in” chorus, and I think the line is, in its way, how you’ve survived. I guess I can’t say the imperfections in “Strawberry Wine” are my favorites – because I love “Carolina Rain” so much. And because I love “Voices” so much. And because I think “Elizabeth, You Were Born To Play That Part” was born to play in my car while it’s gray and raining (I live in Seattle, after all, so that’s often).<br /></div><br /><div>Since then, I’ve gotten caught up on the pre-Cardinals albums. Let me tell you that I don’t see them on playlists of your shows much (I don’t really know your playlists that well anyway), but “My Winding Wheel” and “The Avalanche” and “Hotel Chelsea Nights” are also songs I feel are perfect, even if they’re more direct than some of your braver works. I think “My Love For You Is Real” is a great song to get high to – you can’t stop smiling at it. I love working out to “The Drug’s Not Working” and to “Shakedown on 9th Street.” The truth is, it’s destiny for me to be a fan of your music, and I don’t much care about the other stuff.<br /></div><br /><div>So, I wanted to write you to take objection with your feeling that nothing you did mattered, or any of the “art will set you free” bullshit self-pitying artists can’t seem to take as truth. You are forced to feel how you do about the work that you’ve done, but I don’t have to accept it. Your music has been a part of my life, it has been my friend, it has known more of my thoughts than most people ever will. I’ve defended you against detractors. I’ve said, to many people, that the show at the Paramount in January of 2008 was possibly the best concert of my life. I wrote about “Elizabeth…” in my Great Songs series that I write for, <em>29</em> for my blog, and tried to get my essay on <em>Jacksonville</em> published. I hope you take some pride in the work you’ve done, and I hope you matter to yourself, but ultimately it’s irrelevant because your music matters so much to me.<br /><br />With love and respect,<br /><br />Ethan Kutinsky<br />Seattle, WA 98103<br /><a href="mailto:ekutinsky@gmail.com">ekutinsky@gmail.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/ohsweetnuthin.blogspot.com">ohsweetnuthin.blogspot.com</a></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-86563931827809666172009-01-05T10:38:00.000-08:002009-01-05T13:48:11.273-08:00Best Movies of 2008<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXzR86JeGHEwIqBsjEx9v7e8Llz5sgCJ4UmenJYXEUpdxF6uCx3nxj8AbXnyb72rD4LYm56J5EPv8h1QJyX_03NUKvr9WPT-X-9rBsNG4yqWuRALFsfCl97cbHXyMuzwIRAESM/s1600-h/elegy2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287902311528928834" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 206px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXzR86JeGHEwIqBsjEx9v7e8Llz5sgCJ4UmenJYXEUpdxF6uCx3nxj8AbXnyb72rD4LYm56J5EPv8h1QJyX_03NUKvr9WPT-X-9rBsNG4yqWuRALFsfCl97cbHXyMuzwIRAESM/s320/elegy2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2l7u-LZsNYOhB7pYbg_h5EHK84EbJROqJzM8-vHKsF2qhO5Hhe4Fd82b0yZm8lQ4bFET7RL-vaYbGKbTqhUg1Xq1h3tMNOU6GIuJgft2kdczESGuGvjN5dR7qZ2cpyXheoXVO/s1600-h/milk+-+sean+penn.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287902314992319586" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2l7u-LZsNYOhB7pYbg_h5EHK84EbJROqJzM8-vHKsF2qhO5Hhe4Fd82b0yZm8lQ4bFET7RL-vaYbGKbTqhUg1Xq1h3tMNOU6GIuJgft2kdczESGuGvjN5dR7qZ2cpyXheoXVO/s320/milk+-+sean+penn.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq4UVWaT-SAF1KVGU5w5AzQsRstJUNGdRh2rwir8wDY1A5Y9V8x0K9gjgYOTQefn75ei0l5iEfg2GzVIzMiwpx23PUpUofFDXnJeNd4j_uwzFInkSIYxZoWbUEnlYQ0eYFbmlu/s1600-h/pineapple.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287902314707962482" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 212px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq4UVWaT-SAF1KVGU5w5AzQsRstJUNGdRh2rwir8wDY1A5Y9V8x0K9gjgYOTQefn75ei0l5iEfg2GzVIzMiwpx23PUpUofFDXnJeNd4j_uwzFInkSIYxZoWbUEnlYQ0eYFbmlu/s320/pineapple.bmp" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /><br /><br /><div>I had to wait a bit to make my list, which is perhaps realistic for movie goers who aren't paid to see movies. Since the Oscar-consideration calendar has now crept back into, like, October, keeping up with the "prestige" releases is a little exhausting. Luckily, I disliked both <em>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button </em>(It's Old Man Does Forrest Gump for far too long... before it's a totally unconvincing love story. Although, the aging trick is pretty spectactular) and <em>Revolutionary Road </em>(just mean spirited), so, my list didn't even undergo many adjustments recently. I still, however, haven't had a chance to see some movies I'd like to - <em>The Wrestler, Nothing But The Truth, Frozen River, The Class, Frost/Nixon</em>, and, I think more importantly, a number of smaller, independent releases that have a chance to truly impress me. That's why I think the truest Best of the Year lists are ongoing. And that the only real #1 of any year is the movie that moved you the most, which is perhaps why my #1 pick this year has 0 Oscar buzz. It is, however, closest to my heart.<br /><br /><strong>Best Movies of 2008:</strong><br /><strong>1. <em>Elegy</em></strong><br />Perhaps 2008 is the year of getting old. As <em>Benjamin Button</em>'s shallow ruminations on getting old soar to Awards victory, Roger Ebert pointed out that the movie about aging people will <em>really</em> remember is Charlie Kaufmann's <em>Synecdoche, NY.</em> Well, I didn't love that one either. What I did love was <em>Elegy</em>, a disquieting, magnificently powerful movie not simply of aging, but of the concept of aging. Following David Kapesh (Ben Kingsley), a mid-60's professor who begins in affair with Consuela, a much younger student played by Penelope Cruz, <em>Elegy</em> is the story of the way not just age affects their romance, but of Kapesh's own understanding of age, his own hangups about how old he looks and appears to others. It's a movie about the way constant anxiety over that appearance clouds what actually exists.<br /><br />Isabel Coixet is a first time director, but she makes the sweet, soft images of <em>Elegy</em> combine with two magnificent performances to discuss what love, friendship, desire, and even our interactions with each other mean, past our own understanding of them. In fact, it makes a fairly convincing argument that our understanding gets in the way of actual interactions. I was left with more to think about after <em>Elegy</em> than any other movie I saw all year, and it's because it simply told a story of its characters that respected their humanity, their mystery, their desires, and their misconceptions. I dare you to find any moment in any of the eventual Best Picture nominees that disarms more than the truly astonishing scene in which Consuela, now desperate, with short hair, returns to David and strips for him. If you've seen the movie, you know why this scene is so wrenching and unforgettable. If you've seen Penelope Cruz's face in it, you know why she gave the performance of the year. Little did I know while seeing that scene, the movie would be impossible to top too.<br /><br /><strong><em>2. Milk</em></strong><br />The prestige movie that actually delivers. Gus Van Sant's <em>Milk</em> makes two very smart decisions in chronicling the life of slain San Francisco politician Harvey Milk - first, to focus on the nuts and bolts of the political process, on the greased hands, illogical causes, and the piecemeal way in which Milk rises to more and more prominent posts. Second, in the astonishing work of Sean Penn, whose nebbishy tics and passion make his joy and nervousness ours. <em>Milk</em> gets very personal towards the end, and it works and wounds because the process of believing in something is given such specific, grand weight - and because we believe right along with him.<br /><strong><em></em></strong><br /><strong><em>3. Pineapple Express</em></strong><br />Secretly the best of the "Apatow gang" comedies, <em>Pineapple Express</em> did something no other comedy this year made me do: make me laugh. Not just laugh, but double over laughing, with stoners, at stoners, with action movie fans, at action movie fans. <em>Pineapple Express</em> loves the bonds stoners and friends create and never lets you believe that bond is less than real. James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Danny McBride are great, but only because their weird love of each other and occasional hatred of themselves makes their bond in the movie surprisingly effective and totally believable. It might have taken the breezy, drama-helmed direction of David Gordon Green to make a story of friendship outshine a dopey action-buddy narrative - and still be hilarious.<br /><br /><strong><em>4. Rachel Getting Married</em></strong><br />Jonathan Demme's story of a recovering, self-obsessed, frazzled woman returning from rehab to attend her sister's wedding is a gritty, shaky-cam excuse for great performances. But it's also a simple, breezy, occasionally gripping-with-awkwardness story of accepting people, of how we're our own worst enemies, of blame and love and caring for the people around us. Plenty argued that they found the family of <em>Rachel</em> obnoxious, or couldn't deal with the jutting, rough camera work, but it all seemed to me a grand exercise of getting in the lives of the people it chronicled with great respect and sincerity. Maybe its crew is self-obsessed and crazy, but then maybe all of us are too - at least they know how to throw a loving, honest wedding, and we just got to watch.<br /><strong><em></em></strong><br /><strong><em>5. Happy-Go-Lucky</em></strong><br />Mike Leigh's most loving, human movie, <em>Happy-Go-Lucky </em>has the good sense to give us a woman who is happy, positive, and improves the lives of everyone around her, and not punish her for it. Sally Hawkins as Poppy, with her great boots and clangy arm of bracelets, flitters like a lawn ornament, but she also helps and cares and stands up for herself and people around her. Shot with Leigh's most gorgeous cinematic eye yet, <em>Happy-Go-Lucky</em> is magnificently warm, well crafted, and deserving to be told; it's the first movie of his I've seen that didn't ever have me looking at my watch, and it's one I'd watch again. I wish it didn't get a little too easy in its final minute, but <em>Happy</em> is a true triumph of people acting warmly towards one another.<br /><strong><em></em></strong><br /><strong><em>6. Wall-E</em></strong><br />Maybe as usual with Pixar movies, I'm gaga for it without feeling the grip I felt in better movies, like <em>Elegy</em> and <em>Happy-Go-Lucky</em>. I too gazed lovingly at the bleak but warm view of the future - fat people flying around with constant giant sodas, a world abandoned into garbage and soullessness. It's the hater in me that points out that <em>Wall-E</em> is better social satire than romance, but with images of the future this indelible, there's no doubt <em>Wall-E</em> is bound to be one of the most significant Pixar movies yet, a grand leap in ambition and scope, and, robot or no, made animation even more able to tell important human stories<br /><br /><strong><em>7. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist</em></strong><br />Even if you're sick of Michael Cera playing the most adorable teenage nerd in the world, <em>Nick & Norah'</em>s story of streetwise privileged New York teens is a wild and wonderful story of a great night out. I wish that all of the supposed 17 and 18 year olds didn't look and act like they were in their mid-20's, but maybe New York's teenagers age faster than the rest of us. Regardless, <em>Nick & Norah</em> is the movie I went in grouchiest and came out most excited this year - a bit of young romance and wonder at the world illuminating the possibilities of night life in any city.<br /><br /><strong><em>8. The Dark Knight</em></strong><br />Ignoring the ass-busting running time and the rather unnecessary Two Face plotline, <em>The Dark Knight</em> is the most credible "dark" superhero story, perhaps ever, because of Heath Ledger's combination of blissful anomie and Christian Bale's stolid righteousness. Ledger takes his Joker to such horrific, lived-in dispeptic superiority, far more than any performer would ever be expected of. But it's easy to overlook that it's truly the combination of Ledger and Bale that makes the movie so gripping - its humanist message only works if you root for the Bat, too.<br /><strong><em></em></strong><br /><strong><em>9. Doubt</em></strong><br />The prestige movie I'd dismissed as stagebred fodder turned out to be far more than expected, not about doubt, certainty, religion, or Catholic church sex scandals, but about the world of suspicion and responsibility. Meryl Streep - who is, after all, Meryl Streep - gives such a harrowingly cruelty-laced performance that it overshadows the doubt and certainty of everyone else in the movie (with the possible exception of the wonderfully sensitive Viola Davis), and it allows her remaining humanity to underscore the film's brilliant sense of parochial duty.<br /><br /><strong><em>10. The Edge of Heaven</em></strong><br />Touching on religion, politics, nationalism, the illusion of geographical line, language, and the frail bonds of child and parent, it would be easy to paint <em>The Edge of Heaven</em>, from Turkish director Fatih Akin, as the grand European answer to <em>Babel</em>. And it is - grand in that it's quiet, intimate, unflashy, a criss-cross of love, concern, and a desire to reconnect that respects the grand, small connections of us all. </div></div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-53246585072832636782008-12-28T17:30:00.000-08:002009-01-05T13:58:33.747-08:00Best Music of the Year<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285040202095091906" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkA3_NJ26QcxhSqffEtdTJThcmSFj-8pVsaWPU8vsHRIMGCZB6qkCxG2vHkIwjwCXCSIR3hHaq2yoIysIuYCjlNYvw7OQ7n0Ojjx2bNSeKpPB7vligCC6yl9WX_Y8NmR5JBp6f/s320/0202_q_tip.jpg" border="0" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCyXEWYGM020rOm0-HVppgtdY_i9-jiYqxmqOYxlhXTv_bIurNL1cDKoMgCMnTEqlRrowK8DW-6MPEEz0gDrBVDd5W3zDCKb1xjNIF0Y_XJkkkA3c1sgAeJlWT7ffs692DdGWj/s1600-h/rihanna.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285040201886857586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 226px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCyXEWYGM020rOm0-HVppgtdY_i9-jiYqxmqOYxlhXTv_bIurNL1cDKoMgCMnTEqlRrowK8DW-6MPEEz0gDrBVDd5W3zDCKb1xjNIF0Y_XJkkkA3c1sgAeJlWT7ffs692DdGWj/s320/rihanna.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQZjdqiLLVjv14zAaQei7f4Nc8rx11i4l6TTmrbvJvgrizdXAyhZ7P23NrkMsGXiTRRU1HzgHtSr-Vrf0yrVEEcLeuSw88gLIHnvxwRUMx8l-vNNufUFds9IUstXBNzG2BWH1z/s1600-h/tv-on-the-radio.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285040193728361650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 255px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQZjdqiLLVjv14zAaQei7f4Nc8rx11i4l6TTmrbvJvgrizdXAyhZ7P23NrkMsGXiTRRU1HzgHtSr-Vrf0yrVEEcLeuSw88gLIHnvxwRUMx8l-vNNufUFds9IUstXBNzG2BWH1z/s320/tv-on-the-radio.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><strong><em>Top Albums of 2008</em></strong></div><br /><div><strong>1. TV On The Radio <em>Dear Science</em></strong></div><div>What a year. Music in 2008 was more passionate and exciting than in any year this decade, and it seemed to crib from whatever was necessary - the 80's and early 90's came back in style with synthesizers everywhere, punk giutars roared back, and techno was safe for the radio. This year, I think we moved backwards to move forwards and wound up creating music that was wildly inventive - new in terms of scope and topic and even pushing sounds past what we thought we'd seen and heard.</div><div></div><br /><div>I was already a TV On The Radio fan, but nothing the New York art-hard rock-punk-world-techno band had done before sounded anything like the furious guitars and calm vocals that open "Halfway Home," a song of dizzying ambivalence of death, comfort, confusion, and acceptance. The song is electrifying, but also magnificently warm and singable, in a way that even the band's best work hadn't been. That's true of the record as a whole - letting the rap giddiness of "Dancing Choose" eagerly beckon into love songs like "Family Tree," and letting each song be a profound bed of emotion and poetry. Music like this is astonishing in and of itself anyway, but the lyrics open <em>Dear Science</em> into a world you don't expect - a blazing, brave confrontation with meaning, passion, existence. By closing in the 1-2-3 punch of "Shout Me Out," "DLZ," and "Lover's Day," TV On The Radio shows excitement, fury, and love be one and the same, exist in the same breath. "Yes of course there are miracles," they conclude in "Day," "A lover that loves, that's one," before unleashing a filthy, beautiful song of sex and longing that makes explicit and raging all the passion that fuels questioning, love, and living. <em>Dear Science</em> longs for answers and then gives us some.</div><br /><div></div><div><strong>2. Q Tip <em>The Renaissance</em></strong></div><div>I can think of only one possible reason for <em>The Renaissance</em> not being near the top of every critic's top ten list this year - it's so fun and ebulliant from beginning to end that it just reminds of you of every other great Q Tip and Tribe Called Quest song ever made. That has to be it, because <em>The Renaissance </em>makes you feel high from the opening beat of "Johnny Is Dead" and makes you perfectly content to remain there until "Shaka" signs off with dramatic hope. Or maybe it just didn't sell that well.</div><br /><div></div><div>The truth is rap and rock have a double standard in the way music critics talk about them. Rock can be totally irrelevant, the albums can be listened to by 15 people in Seattle or Williamsburg and still wind up on top of most critics best of the year lists, whereas rap albums have to have Lil Wayne's numbers to be considered relevant - ignoring mainstream rap in favor of less successful albums is tantamount to cultural illiteracy. Well, I dare you to listen to Lil Wayne's dully mediocre <em>Tha Carter III</em> then follow it up with <em>The Rennaisance</em> and tell me you like Wayne better. <em>The Renaissance</em> is so varied, wild, packed with guest stars (like "Life Is Better," featuring a Norah Jones vocal that plasters a smile permanently to your face), and exciting, it becomes a giddy, energizing force that doesn't even break between songs. The theatrics of "Shaka" are more than well deserved - by the end of <em>The Renaissance, </em>they're a curtain call earning a standing ovation.</div><div><strong><em></em></strong></div><br /><div><strong>3. Madonna <em>Hard Candy</em></strong></div><div>In a year in which the 80's infected absolutely everything from fashion and music in rock, pop, and R/B, it should make sense that the best neo-80's sound came from Madonna. It may be her 11th record, but <em>Hard Candy</em> tops a decade of Madonna at her Euro-techno finest. "Give It 2 Me" turns the worst synthesizer of 1988 into a propulsive club anthem and gives Kanye West his best moment of the year (seriously) in "Beat Goes On." It offers the promise of a "one stop candy shop" in the opening moments but allows ruminations on failed relationships that run from wrenching intimacy to furious resolve, often in the same song ("Miles Away," "Incredible"), and considering her year of divorce and custody tabloid mishegos, songs like "Voices" and "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You" allow a rather shocking bit of bruised intimacy into the Madonna fray. The truth is, since most indie music is obsessed with 80's synth and techno anyway, most indie bands would do themselves a favor analyzing what goes so right with <em>Hard Candy - </em>sure, it may have plenty of input from the biggest pop producers and stars in the business, but it's all Madonna, confessing and cracking a whip all over the dance floor, as only she can.<br /></div><br /><div><strong>4. Eagles of Death Metal <em>Heart On</em></strong></div><div>What was once a joke band to keep Josh Hommes occupied between Queens of the Stone Age records wound up making an album of more humor and bravado than even Queens have been capable of in their last two records. Sure, the dufus-in-tight-pants schtick is in full effect in "Wannabe In LA" and "High Voltage" ("We're gettin' freaky in the shadows of the night," Hommes and Jesse Hughes sing), but there's also a rock sensibility that was only part of the show before on this record, and in "Heart On" or "Cheap Thrills," the record is so loud and exciting, you forget you're supposed to be laughing. That's because <em>Heart On</em> is the dufus-with-a-broken-heart EoDM album, and "Now I'm A Fool" makes a fairly convincing case for this. With all emotion, excitement, and humor intact, the finale, "I'm Your Torpedo," manages to be the loudest and most satisfying rock song of the year - and one that could have been made by no other band.</div><br /><div><strong><em></em></strong></div><div><strong>5. My Morning Jacket <em>Evil Urges</em></strong></div><div>MMJ deserve credit for expanding their sound from any recognizable alt-country genre exercise and indulging their instinct to free themselves from expectation, to engage in a few evil urges themselves. The results, like "Highly Suspicious" and "Evil Urges," sung in falsetto, are ridiculous and astonishing. The rock numbers like "I'm Amazed" and "Aluminum Park" are more infused with belief and passion than repeating another MMJ album would have allowed, and if it weren't for a few ponderous, supposed-to-be-deep clunkers in the middle, the excitement of "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Pt. 2" and "Smokin' From Shootin'" would have made this album legendary. As it is, we're lucky that this album reaches such astonishing highs, even if it isn't sustained.</div><br /><div><em></em></div><div><strong>6. Beck <em>Modern Guilt</em></strong></div><div>Beck caps his 2000's winning streak with an album that pushes his anxiety and techno instincts into a deadly standoff - "Orphans" sees Beck wrestling with his maker, "Volcano" sees him jumping into a volcano, and "Soul of a Man" has him waxing existential. Using Danger Mouse as his dance muse, Beck loses his way and, in 34 wise, concise minutes, helps us grapple with our own dual instincts to party and drink ourselves to death.</div><br /><div><strong><em></em></strong></div><div><strong>7. Kings of Leon <em>Only By The Night</em></strong></div><div>Following their instinct to get psychadelic and long, opened up on <em>Because of the Times</em>, Kings show what their best at - wild rockers like "Crawl" and "Manhattan" that allow for Caleb Followill's southern-mumbles voice to bury a hard-partying consciousness in great rock, and then set it free on glorious, sad jams like "Cold Desert."</div><br /><div><strong><em></em></strong></div><div><strong>8. MGMT <em>Oracular Spectacular</em></strong></div><div>Where Madonna got the 80's techno pop right, but for the indie version, MGMT is as great it comes. Subversive or no, "Time to Pretend" and "Kids" are party-friendly and just as fun in skinny jeans.</div><br /><div><strong><em></em></strong></div><div><strong>9. Jaymay <em>Autumn Fallin'</em></strong></div><div>The year's best singer-songwriter debut, this forgotten March release is a warm, well written, beautifully simple record of heartbreak, easing moments of excitement like "Grey or Blue" into daring, lovely Dylanesque rambles like "Sea Green, See Blue" and "You'd Rather Run."</div><br /><div><strong><em></em></strong></div><div><strong>10. Raphael Saadiq <em>The Way I See It</em></strong></div><div>There's plenty of R/B on the radio to steal its thunder, but by sounding older and more retro than everyone, Saadiq's way of seeing also sounds more seductive and wild.</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><br /><div><strong><em>Top Singles of 2008</em></strong></div><br /><div><strong>1. "Disturbia" Rihanna</strong></div><div>I didn't believe Rihanna was a real pop star until "Disturbia," a techno'd-out horror story that really is a song of feeling cut off and overwhelmed. Addicting and pulsating, "Disturbia" works because Rihanna's voice sounds more vulnerable and in control than any song she's done prior.</div><br /><div></div><div><strong>2. "Forever" Walter Meego</strong></div><div>An indie-techno wonder that earns the power to say (through a voice-box, natch) "I can make you excited."</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>3. "Electric Feel" MGMT</strong></div><div>The best of the MGMT techno-rock numbers, "Electric Feel" gets you sailing on its synth-flute beat and dorky charm.</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>4. "Paper Planes" M.I.A.</strong></div><div>It takes a Tamil rebel and a chorus of gun shots to make the hustler anthem of the year. Santogold took much of MIA's wild-ethnic-superstar thunder this year, but "Paper Planes" proves why MIA's the real deal.</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>5. "So What" Pink</strong></div><div>A kiss off like no other, if it weren't for its simple melody, and great techno chorus, this would just be another Stewart Smalley affirmation. </div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>6. "Forever" Chris Brown</strong></div><div>The techno R/B seduction anthem that everyone tried to make this year, Brown's "Forever" is the one you want to go home with.</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>7. "Keeps Gettin' Better" Christina Aguilera</strong></div><div>Getting the 70's into the 80's dance party, Aguilera is dirrty and beautiful at once.</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>8. "A-Punk" Vampire Weekend</strong></div><div>An indie rock guitar dance song that's like a festival-rock bounce anthem gone giddy.</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>9. "What U Got" Colby O'Donis featuring Akon</strong></div><div>I'll take "What U Got" and its sexy curiosity over the balcony-humping "Love In This Club" at any dance party.</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>10. "Ready For The Floor" Hot Chip</strong></div><div>Like "Electric Feel" performed by more sincere robots.</div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong><em></em></strong></div><div><strong><em>Top 10 Songs from Non-great albums</em></strong></div><br /><div><strong>1. "Real Love" Lucinda Williams </strong>(from <em>Little Honey</em>)</div><div><strong>2. "The Cheapest Key" Kathleen Edwards </strong>(from <em>Asking For Flowers</em>)</div><div><strong>3. "Blue Ridge Mountains" Fleet Foxes </strong>(from <em>Fleet Foxes</em>)</div><div><strong>4. "Strange Times" The Black Keys </strong>(from <em>Attack and Release</em>)</div><div><strong>5. "Love Lockdown" Kanye West </strong>(from <em>808s and Heartbreaks</em>)</div><div><strong>6. "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" R.E.M. </strong>(from <em>Accelerate</em>)</div><div><strong>7. "I'm A Lady" Santogold </strong>(from <em>Santogold</em>)</div><div><strong>8. "2080" Yeasayer </strong>(from <em>All Hour Symbols</em>)</div><div><strong>9. "Drunk With The Thought of You" Sheryl Crow </strong>(from <em>Detours</em>)</div><div><strong>10. "Magick" Ryan Adams & The Cardinals </strong>(from <em>Cardinology</em>)</div></div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-51716301015191886272008-12-25T22:22:00.000-08:002008-12-25T22:36:52.725-08:00Best of the Year 2008: The Real List<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqCXxMFpDKdqIXXfd2GQjwzx12V1EAiY2OuhMXIev1BVx90KNKxMUeZStkaMrTIRF76IDiHjnFkPfOmqgKcTSvUlCFx0liEE7Ujxp2ducgFE1qxC8GEThjPxBzx39r4pvSC23c/s1600-h/tinafey.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283984008035754962" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 219px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqCXxMFpDKdqIXXfd2GQjwzx12V1EAiY2OuhMXIev1BVx90KNKxMUeZStkaMrTIRF76IDiHjnFkPfOmqgKcTSvUlCFx0liEE7Ujxp2ducgFE1qxC8GEThjPxBzx39r4pvSC23c/s320/tinafey.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHK7vqcnLuQ_67dE8gSngUhxxEQdpec0R-5ErZouYAG52SkaYVreEP1NT3yyrvYxp-Hy8O7OFbHwziEVfR2CDQocQcohZHS6j6oYKgw7CNdNdpO58YflgjM7CUYdfrFxoUkMPF/s1600-h/playtime008.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283984001043933874" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 173px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHK7vqcnLuQ_67dE8gSngUhxxEQdpec0R-5ErZouYAG52SkaYVreEP1NT3yyrvYxp-Hy8O7OFbHwziEVfR2CDQocQcohZHS6j6oYKgw7CNdNdpO58YflgjM7CUYdfrFxoUkMPF/s320/playtime008.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8B_K7X5h7AF6lp0tZSCc2kscif-Kmp2DboJ8f61qRaMx_umCUWoUDPSTKoQa1DUSemwoiF3BifjmUMzGC9vkzRPEoMQbcNNPOVj0Xh0aDpsgDUj2qoXFV2bqtTOKSmcYc7NQw/s1600-h/sheltering.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283984003922511522" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8B_K7X5h7AF6lp0tZSCc2kscif-Kmp2DboJ8f61qRaMx_umCUWoUDPSTKoQa1DUSemwoiF3BifjmUMzGC9vkzRPEoMQbcNNPOVj0Xh0aDpsgDUj2qoXFV2bqtTOKSmcYc7NQw/s320/sheltering.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div>Every year, I spend some time during the flurry of annual Best Of The Year lists is movies, music, and TV to reflect on what I think is the best of the year, at least, the most meaningful books, songs, albums, movies, TV shows, etc., that I had not known about or experienced a year ago. For most people, any year can include any number of works of arts from any number of years – this year, I saw for the first time the classic <em>The Lion In Winter</em>, which was entertaining and theatrical enough, and released 40 years ago. This year I saw <em>The Rules of the Game</em> for the first time, a seminal film released in 1939. I did not include either of those movies on my list because, as great as they were, they were works I appreciated without being moved, changed. These ten works, new or not, meant more to me.<br /><br /><strong>1. Paul Bowles <em>The Sheltering Sky</em></strong> (1949)<br />So often, I read a modern novel, and find a consciousness and character at work that I identify with immediately. I’ve fallen in love with works by Rick Moody, George Saunders, Paul Auster, Alice Munro, and read their books so precisely that I feel I have no tolerance for older works, works of the American and world lit canon that I feel like I missed out on because I wasn’t forced to read them in college.<br /><br />That changed this year. The modern works I read that I was supposed to love this year – Kate Atkinson’s <em>Case Histories</em>, James McManus’s <em>Positively Fifth Street</em>, Neil Gordon’s <em>The Company You Keep</em> – I saw through, detested, or gave up on midway through. Instead, far and away the greatest book I read this year was the Paul Bowles classic <em>The Sheltering Sky,</em> published in 1949, a classic I didn’t even know I’d missed. The book explores Port and Kit Moresby, two Americans wandering Africa sometime after the war – for what reason? We’re not sure really, and neither are they, desperate to shed off the skin of the civility of their New York world.<br /><br /><em>The Sheltering Sky</em> gives them what they’re looking for, in a way, and it’s an act of both great indictment and vindication to have a second act of your book titled “The Earth’s Sharp Edge” – that is, the edge with which Kit and Port fall off. In it, Port contracts a disease and Kit collapses under the pressure only to release herself in a way she certainly wasn’t expecting. Is society a lid that keeps down the madness of Port and Kit’s soul, or is it what makes them desperate, lonely, and vicious to one another? Bowles has some answers, but it’s the fact that the questions are asked, that madness is granted and warned against, and that it’s written in a style like Hemingway, minimal, cutting, giving you nothing but what you need to know, and letting the bleakness of the surroundings and the prose tell you everything you need to know and then some. Right now, just writing it, I want to reread every word and pick out the factors that made these characters delusional, angry, pitiful, and representative of all of us, protected by a sky above us that creates order.<br /><br /><strong>2. <em>Playtime</em> </strong>(1967)<br />This year, a friend’s fantastic birthday purchase of a Netflix subscription has yielded me an opportunity to see a number of amazing movies I’ve always meant to see. I saw <em>Tokyo Story</em> and <em>La Dolce Vita </em>and <em>Beauty and the Beast</em>, and what a gift each of those movies are. The one that surprised me the most, though, is <em>Playtime</em>, a movie that pushes you right in the center of its wonderful concoction of modern metropolitan France and leaves you in awe and smiling for 2 hours. A world of an order, and of specific modes of movement and behavior, Jacques Tati’s Paris is bewildering, ridiculous, and full of people grasping for connection and understanding.<br /><br />The movie is a love poem to modern society even as it spotlights the contrivances that keep people from connecting. In one of its many nimble, extraordinary sequences, a man and a woman in separate apartments engage in a bit of a seduction, as we watch from their outside windows. Yet they don’t actually interact, they’re separated by the wall and the televisions each are watching. The two complement each other without even being aware of each other’s existence. Tati created <em>Playtime</em> as absolutely a movie with no equal – a song of movement and interaction that moves, unconcerned with plot or character, simply wrapping us up in the world that we’re so lucky to live in.<br /><br />3. <strong>“Forever” Walter Meego<br /></strong>The 80’s are everywhere, and for proof, line up the pop music of the year next to the indie music – you’d find the two not so distinct. Songs like MGMT’s “Electric Feel” and Hot Chip’s “Ready For The Floor” – songs, basically, about love and dancing – fit right in with Chris Brown’s “Forever” or Madonna’s “Give It 2 Me.” Of all of these, though, music made me dance, laugh, and appreciate all things indie, no single song moved better or excited more than Walter Meego’s “Forever.”<br /><br />I heard it first at a concert I saw for no particular reason, and found Walter Meego’s guitar/voicebox/synth combo charming and fun. Yet “Forever” is more than that – it’s that sense of fun turned into something that elevates and restores. Its choruses are bracketed by the line “I can make you excited,” and it proves itself right – full of bass, pulse, and drive, the song is excitement, about music, about love, about being alive. Songs did better than “Forever” in both pop sales and indie recognition (although, I did see the “Forever” video playing in an American Eagle in LA, and later on an ad for Heineken), but none elicited more easy smiles than this one – and certainly, none meant more to me.<br /><br /><strong>4. Penelope Cruz in <em>Elegy</em></strong><br />In this time of Oscar prognostication, people write about Best Actress contenders in terms of “slots.” Is there room for Meryl Streep in <em>Doubt</em> to be nominated without taking up Angelina Jolie’s “slot” for <em>Changeling</em>? We used to watch movies throughout the year and then decide who was deserving of nominations. I for one would ask that people remember a woman who seems to already have a “slot” for Best Supporting Actress – Penelope Cruz, who will be deserving, too, when she is nominated this year for her magnificently fiery work in <em>Vicky Cristina Barcelona.</em><br /><br />But her better performance was in a lead role, in <em>Elegy</em>, and she almost certainly won’t be nominated. As the young object of desire by a mid-60’s professor, played by Ben Kingsley, Cruz manages to be mysterious under his gaze, as well as gorgeously open and naïve. She is full of love, excitement, and desire, and it is perhaps her genuineness that, along with his own self-centered concerns about his age, keeps Kingsley’s David Kapesh from really understanding her. Cruz manages to convey everything through gorgeous glances and perfect smiles, but it’s one unforgettable, devastating scene towards the end of the movie in which Cruz gets very very naked, that we truly understand every emotion she feels. The scene is wordless, but loud – Cruz proved herself as capable and powerful as any working today.<br /><br /><strong>5. Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on <em>Saturday Night Live</em><br /></strong>Without a doubt the single most important bit of fictional television all year. For around six weeks of completely inspired impersonations, Fey deeply wounded a political figure perhaps more than any actor, comedian, commentator, or talk-show host since Chevy Chase skewered Gerald Ford in 1975 – and she did it simply by mimicking her, by looking like her in stately dresses, and by sounding like her when she spoke. Her impersonation of Palin’s wild inconsistencies and quirky-moronic defense mechanisms during the Palin-Katie Couric interview were only hair’s breath from realty anyway, but it allowed for lines like “and now I’m going to impress you with some fancy pageant walking” or “For those of you Joe Six-Packs playing a drinking game at home? Maverick” to be even funnier because they didn’t seem all that off from the real thing. This was a moment that we can remember as the way true comedy, done well can really matter – and can matter more by being of high quality.<br /><br /><strong>6. <em>The Straight Story</em></strong> (1999)<br />Another great Netflix viewing that I didn’t expect to love and miss as much as I did. David Lynch’s The Straight Story seems like a joke on paper – a straightforward narrative of a nearly blind old man (Richard Farnsworth) driving his lawn mower across Iowa to see his dying brother – and perhaps that’s why it took me nearly ten years to see it. But the amazing thing about the movie is that Farnsworth, with his small, searing eyes, seems to be the only person capable of allowing Lynch to express his sincerity. Unlike his movies that, with varying success, plunge the duality of human desire and cruelty, The Straight Story is about the kindness and compassion that binds us all together. You see Lynch’s vision in his shots anyway, and maybe that’s the greatest aspect of The Straight Story – that kindness can exist in people you’re suspicious of, and that it can sustain you.<br /><br /><strong>7. TV On The Radio <em>Dear Science</em><br /></strong>Every year, it gets more and more exhausting to try and keep up with critical music tastes – even this year, when I feel I’ve been relatively up-to-date on music coming out in the world, I don’t recognize half the albums of most critic’s top ten lists. Usually, I pick whatever album meant the most to me as the album of the year – Neko Case or PJ Harvey or Blackalicious, or whomever I just happened to find give me the most sustained, exciting record of the year.<br /><br />Well, I’m good and shocked to find that most critics seem to agree that Dear Science seems practically on another plane to every other mainstream release this year. “Halfway Home” opens the record with its furious guitars and drums, and shocks you with its lyrics of consternation at so many eternal questions. Science is TV’s eclectic, loud confrontation at the things that create meaning in our life – the threat of death, the existence of love. They do it with Tunde Adebimpe’s astonishing lyrical abilities, and with music that can be poppy, rap, punk, virulent, sexy, or lovely at any given moment. For a band that was already unique in their spot in modern music, Dear Science is their most listenable, and most ambitious record. When Return to Cookie Mountain was released in 2006 and everyone called it amazing, you sometimes had to work to enjoy some of its weaker cuts; it was excellent but cerebral. Dear Science is the first record of theirs I loved as much as I admired.<br /><br /><strong>8. Battles, Performance at Bumbershoot<br /></strong>This is a work of art that only those lucky enough to see Battles perform live can appreciate, as seeing music live is so different from listening to it on your own. Particularly at a setting like Bumbershoot – Seattle’s annual 3-day, outdoor music festival over Labor Day weekend – where the excitement of music and art is infectious for everyone wandering from one unheard act to another. I’d never heard of Battles before the show, and nothing could have prepared me anyway – a drummer, guitarist, and keyboard player who are maybe electronic, or maybe art-rock, or maybe industrial, or maybe hard rock, or maybe pop, and who each seem to play whatever they feel like, whenever they feel like it. It’s an art-rock version of a discordant jazz jam-band, but it requires the setting of a concert to really understand – to feel the volume that pulsates, the bass that moves your body, the noise that takes over. This is musical performance that’s beyond magnetism – it’s a release, a cleansing.<br /><br /><strong>9. “The Children Stay” By Alice Munro (1998)<br /></strong>As I’ve written about “Cortes Island” from <em>The Love Of A Good Woman </em>collection by Munro on one of these lists, I wanted to avoid writing about a second story from the same collection – particularly when I could have written about “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” or “Post and Beam” or “Family Furnishings” or “Trespasses,” all by Munro, just as easily. But “The Children Stay” is the Munro story I think of most (including the other greats from <em>Good Woman</em> I read this year, “Save The Reaper” and “My Mother’s Dream” – each of which was astonishing).<br /><br />Reading a great Munro story is a tapping into the desires and fears we all experience and consider too small to discuss, and “The Children Stay” is about an affair, of sorts, but it’s also about the non-reasons that could create its existence, about the way longing has a million reasons, or none at all. It’s three parts of this story that have stayed with me months after reading it. One, a quick reference to “talks like this” throughout the marriage of its two main characters – meaning late night talks about love, life, philosophy – as a force that sustained the marriage and masked its discontent. Second, a lengthy dining room conversation about the meaning of Orpheus. Third, a dizzyingly simple, haunting final line that shows the longing as lifelong, unanswerable. All I can say is that any reading that sticks with you months is a gift, but a story in which the individual moments that surprise you continue to register that surprise on their recollection is more than great writing – it’s great art.<br /><br /><strong>10. Lawrence Lessig <em>Free Culture</em> (2004)<br /></strong>My strangest bit of popcorn reading for the year, Lessig’s <em>Free Culture</em> dissects the current (well, 2004 current, so current enough) conflicts of copyright violation, people’s fears of litigation, and what that means for how we express ourselves creatively. <em>Free Culture</em> is also a history of the way creativity has always been an act of piracy – or, at the very least, collaboration, and that as much validity that exists in cracking down on illegal, immoral piracy, the harms and the reality of that cracking down are far much worse for how we live, and how we express ourselves. Its legally precise prose that entertains because it makes us question at what point the hassle of the protection for expressing ourselves is enough to contain our best creative instincts.<br /><br /><strong>Honorable Mentions</strong>: Great moments without much context? How about the Roger Ebert essay on why he won’t review Ben Stein’s <em>Expelled </em>(<a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html">http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html</a>), a gripping piece both on the importance of shaping arguments correctly, and defending moral beliefs? Ebert wrote up a storm this year, but of all of his memorable writings, this recent work moved me most.<br /><br />The final montage of <em>The Wire</em>’s finale “-30-” in which we see, basically, a synopsis on everything and everybody. You could complain that this sort of thing was excessively summative, but it also created a compelling, singular moment of explanation to recognize the factors that create who we are, from our crackheads to our governors. As a philosophical text, this four minute piece of the 90 minute finale gave me more to think about than everything on television combined… except Tina Fey of course.<br /><br />Finally, the cinematography of Mike Leigh’s <em>Happy-Go-Lucky</em>. It was not showy and will likely not win any awards, but the filming was a frame by frame evocation of that movie’s wonderful advocacy for being positive and caring. One beautiful shot of its lovely protagonist Poppy (Sally Hawkins) walking onto her new boyfriend’s balcony after a wonderful date is like a vision of tranquility – her hair flowing as the sun sets on her beautiful city. Leigh gets much credit for the subtle and true improvisation he brings to the actors of his movies, but I hope people begin to see <em>Happy-Go-Lucky</em> as proof of his subtle and true visual capabilities, too.</div></div></div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30503883.post-73431782718525815102008-12-15T15:35:00.000-08:002008-12-15T17:22:06.573-08:00A few new albums<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAU6rV4XfvMbEAGNre714JZJdfStDKoyUUcmL-GlqHDJ5EtTARwNxY-CQPtZ62wqvbuychrh17DDSDq1zRX8SORv16LG18wV6G8qv3oMJplmzWj9T-_PMWxzcILULWy5hKTT22/s1600-h/EaglesOfDeathMetal.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5280164989611589954" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 318px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAU6rV4XfvMbEAGNre714JZJdfStDKoyUUcmL-GlqHDJ5EtTARwNxY-CQPtZ62wqvbuychrh17DDSDq1zRX8SORv16LG18wV6G8qv3oMJplmzWj9T-_PMWxzcILULWy5hKTT22/s320/EaglesOfDeathMetal.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Some notable artists I’m fans of released albums recently, and each surprised me a bit, but perhaps not as I expected.<br /><br /><strong>Eagles of Death Metal <em>Heart On </em><br /></strong><br />Originally, Eagles of Death Metal were Josh Hommes’ joke side band during bong-rips between Queens of the Stone Age albums. Their initial release <em>Peace Love Death Metal</em> in 2003 had some fun songs on it, like the jangly hoe-down “Wastin’ My Time” and the bombastic “English Girl,” but didn’t really last on my play list very long. At the end of the day, the record was only slightly better than a joke my buddies would’ve come up with between bong rips, and once, did, creating the sadly defunct Hidden Valley Man Ranch.<br /><br />I wasn’t planning on buying <em>Heart On</em> for mostly that reason – the kitschy swagger title, the artwork of Hommes and co-band mate Jesse Hughes in full 80’s butt rock attire made me think it was more – and more extreme versions – of the same stoner joke. Then I heard it in a cd store and found myself shaking my ass and clapping along – just a little – to the opening song “Anything ‘Cept The Truth.” <em>Heart On</em> seemed to be onto something that <em>Peace Love</em> only hinted at – this music could be as fun for us as it was for Hommes and Hughes. “Anything ‘Cept The Truth” is a song of bravado like any of their previous works, but about a man proudly displaying how full of shit he is – something that makes it remarkably more honest than the rest of their catalogue. Even more than that, songs like “Now I’m a Fool” and “How Can A Man With So Many Friends Feel So Alone” are plenty full of LA doofisness, but are also actually sorta sad. Could this be the high school fantasy where the high schooler finds himself inexplicably heartbroken?<br /><br />Sometimes, and that only aides the feeling of rock discovery with <em>Heart On</em>, which could have added the words “your sleeve” to that title if it would’ve still been funny. Instead, the title track and record have a great deal in common – they’re jangly, economical beasts of heart, humor, and excitement. In fact, the albums missteps are its “typical” Eagles of Death Metal songs – “Prissy Prancin’” and the masturbation anthem “Solo Flights” that are humor without the bite. It doesn’t matter though – surrounded by tracks like “High Voltage,” “Cheap Thrills,” and climaxing with “I’m Your Torpedo,” this is the rock record that earns actual bravado instead of just dresses up in it for laughs.<br /><br /><strong>Lucinda Williams <em>Little Honey </em><br /></strong><br />Since Lucinda released <em>West</em> in February of 2007, apparently things have gotten better. Then, Williams muttered that she “can’t find her joy anywhere,” begged for a man to “unsuffer” her, but then muttered that said man “won’t rescue” her, and ended, with a glittery recognition that “who knows what the future holds or where the cards may lay.” It was one of the best reviewed records of her career, but I found it rather stiff and unconvincing, even if it had moments that soared and were wonderful.<br /><br />But things are better now. “I found the love I’ve been looking for – it’s a real love,” are the opening words on the record, and the song, “Real Love,” is one of the most fiery and happy she’s ever written. <em>Little Honey</em> is being very well reviewed also, but many are seizing on that “It’s a real love” as proof that happiness is not really as useful for Williams’ best writing instincts as misery was – that her loneliness was always so eloquent, and her happiness turns more easily on cliché. I’ve also read that even though the “happy” songs are wonderful (or not, depending on the review), the “real bread and butter” of Williams is still her morose numbers like “If Wishes Were Horses” and “Rarity.” I disagree in 100 ways.<br /><br />First, <em>Little Honey</em> is the weakest album Williams has ever made. Second, it’s not because she’s happy; the happiest songs are the strongest here (ignoring the half-assed numbers like "Jailhouse Tears," a rather worthless duet with Elvis Costello). More importantly, happy songs are not new to Williams, she’s always made great ones, and always made them with simple ideas rammed home under a good structure. “Real Love” might not break any new ground, but it’s fun, lithe, sexy, and propulsive. People writing that it’s new territory for Williams didn’t hear “I Just Wanted To See You So Bad,” the opening song from <em>Lucinda Williams</em>, or “Passionate Kisses,” full of ebullient hope and excitement, or “Six Blocks Away,” full of country sass. None of those songs was particularly more complex than “Real Love,” and like all the great songs of Williams’ great career, the simpler they are, the more they work anyway.<br /><br />That’s especially true of the two other great happy songs of the record, “Honey Bee,” which isn’t even about anything but rocks ridiculously, and “Little Rock Star,” a song of rock self-destruction that morphs into an incendiary guitar-god triumph. But truly, only those three songs to me fulfill what a great Williams song should be – as brilliant as it is effortless. So many of those sad songs of <em>West</em> were competent, full of gorgeous production, and… far too much work. Songs like “What If” and “Words” and “Fancy Funeral” had interesting ideas wandering away from Williams, grafted too heavily on productions that were sweet and wonderful, and didn’t quite fit. That album produced one perfect song, “Are You Alright,” which touched on the magnificent simplicity and profundity of any of the best Williams songs – something I’m quite thankful for. The difference is that on a great Williams record – on a record like <em>Car Wheels On A Gravel Road</em> or <em>World Without Tears</em> – nearly all the songs would have felt like that.<br /><br /><em>Little Honey</em> is already being discussed as a “renaissance” of kinds for Williams, but I actually think it’s proof of something more upsetting – that Williams most creative years are behind her, and this Williams of West and Little Honey is a competent, charming touring musician who loves her guitar and the world of music (on <em>Little Honey</em>, this climaxes in an unobjectionable, not very good remake of AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top”). That’s nothing to object to, but it’s perhaps better to ignore the false praise these albums haven’t deserved and enjoy her for the comforting presence she still is.<br /><br /><strong>Q Tip </strong><em><strong>The Renaissance<br /></strong></em></div><div>I’ll keep my love of this album simple: if you’re not stoned when you start listening to The Renaissance, you might be pretty sure you are by its end. Maybe you should be. </div><div> </div><div>I'd read a couple of positive reviews of The Rennaisance, so I went to listen to it at a local cd store. Flipping on "Johnny Is Dead," the brilliant opening track, I didn't just like the song - I started dancing to it. I didn't just start dancing to it, I started flailing my arms in excitement. Even that wasn't enough, so, talking to the guy behind the counter who started looking at me like I was crazy, I yelled, "This album is THE S***!" At this point, I'd probably heard 1 minute of it. Still, I was right - <em>The Renaissance</em> sucks you in with a mood of excitement and never lets it slip. And that's Tip's intention anyway, "So it's up to me to bring back the hope/ put the feeling in the music that you could quote." The songs are each, probably, less than 4 minutes long, and just as one slags for a second, the next starts. "Johnny Is Dead" moves quickly into "Won't Trade," and then into the giddy, lovely "Gettin' Up" without even leaving you a chance to breathe. Music this fun and moving is great, but it's the feeling that creativity has been unleashed and that Tip doesn't even need time to catch his breath. Most hip hop records start with the singles and then slog off into repetitive numbers, but Tip leaves the weakest material at the beginning and never slows. In the middle, "Manwomanboogie" with its devious baseline and awesome Amanda Diva chorus wins over any remaining skeptics on the record, and combines it with another wildly inventive cameo appearance from Raphael Saadiq on "We Fight/We Love." The album is 12 tracks without a forgettable one on it, and could quite easily lead you to similar fits of embarassment as mine listening to the record in the CD store. By the time you reach the Norah Jones collaboration "Life Is Better" and hopeful finale "Shaka," you're in a hip-hop high you can't even remember experiencing in the last ten years. </div>Ethan Kutinskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00755307809387934193noreply@blogger.com0